United States Politics Thread 46

[Travis B.]

You might object that the device with the screen costs money, too, which is true, but for an intense reader, it won't take long to recover that money by saving money on individual books.

And one doesn't need to buy a separate e-book reader to read e-books if one already owns a phone, tablet, or PC, too...

[Travis B.]

jcb: Wagenknecht might be left-wing, or she might be right-wing, or whatever - in any case she's pretty bad. She started out as a Stalinist, and now she's flirting with Nazis. Neither of those two positions is in any way defensible.

I have no patience for people who defend being 'economically left-wing and culturally right-wing' myself. After all, socialism is for all workers, not just workers of a chosen nation, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or like, and being 'economically left-wing and culturally right-wing' is essentially purporting that one favors one group of workers over other workers.

So is president-unelect Musk running the show now?

It might be a good idea to focus on Musk being bad a lot in the near future. "Unelected idiot billionaires who try to destroy the working class are running things" and so on.

Agreed.

[Travis B.]

I should also note that being 'economically left-wing and culturally right-wing' is always a lie ─ the 'economically left-wing' parts are invariably abandoned once the right has achieved their goals (and for those who still believe in them, remember how things turned out for the Strasserites on the Night of the Long Knives).

[Ares Land]

Their grievance is that their lives suck. Immigration and trans rights are just what they're *told* is the problem by the right. Left parties need to offer an alternative explanation (the true explanation) about why their lives suck: billionaires and capitalist accumulation.

My answer to that is two-fold.
First: how about immigrants and trans people? Don't their lives suck, too? According to the BSW, if your life sucks it only matters if you're a straight white German.
Second: why does the BSW go with the right-wing explanation if it's not a right-wing party? why don't they offer the correct explanation?

So, when Democrats strategically abandon working class economics/voters to try to attract more suburban voters, they're they're still left-wing

Honestly, by wider international standards, the Democrats are not left-wing and never really have been. In the context of American politics, yes, they are to the left of the Republicans (which isn't especially hard to do, I grant you that.)

but when Wagenknecht abandons some cultural issues (but keeps the economics) to keep working class voters, she's no longer left-wing?
Again, this is exactly what I mean by the deletion of economics from politics. Wagenknecht is also aware of this, and it's the reason why she declines to use the word "left" to describe her party

I mean, she even says so herself! More generally, hitting on immigrants, or trans people is dividing the working class into a respectable part and an underclass. Having an underclass is not just a cultural issue; it's an economic issue as well. You get a group of potential workers with essentially no rights, which is excellent for capitalism. I think most of agriculture in California runs on illegal immigrants. The issue isn't with the 'immigrant' part, but with the 'illegal' part.
Extremely convenient to have workers that are 'illegal', isn't it? Or 'legal' workers that entirely depend on their employer.

Immigration particularly so. You can't be conservative on immigration and socialist when it comes to the economy; or conversely liberal on immigration and conservative on economics. It just doesn't work that way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0

I usually like Bernie, but he's dead wrong on that one.
When you're tough on immigration, what really happens is that immigration still happens -- but the 'tougher' you are, the closer their status is to slavery.

I think the ideal situation, for anti-immigration people, is basically the one of migrant workers to the UAE or to Saudi Arabia.

[Ares Land]

Really, Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, anyone? If you read paper books, you know what they cost. I trust you to have some familiarity with the financial situation of poor people, both in the richer and in the poorer parts of the world. So how can you ask this question?

Now, if you don't visit online stores as a matter of principle, you might not know this, but when a place sells both paper books and electronic books, the electronic versions are usually cheaper - sometimes they cost only half as much as the paper version, or even less. And that's before we get to the possibility of breaking laws.

E-books being cheaper than paper books is true of the English-language market. (Maybe in Germany too, I don't read German well enough.) Here in France, paper books are cheaper than in England or the US, e-books are more expensive. Paper and e-books end up costing about the same.

There are quite a few ways to get books cheaply, or even for free: libraries, secondhand books, borrowing from a friend, donations, public bookcases. None of these work with ebooks.
Most libraries do offer ways to borrow e-books (I've been involved in such a project myself ) -- it's not nearly as convenient as the traditional way.

But but paper is better than screens so poor people would pay for paper books if only they knew what's best for them!

I don't necessarily agree with MacAnDàil on the dangers of screens; but the article's conclusions were that kids relate to paper books better. This fits in with my experience. (Toddlers like to interact with books in a physical way, which you can't do with an e-book, for instance.)

[Raphael]

E-books being cheaper than paper books is true of the English-language market. (Maybe in Germany too, I don't read German well enough.) Here in France, paper books are cheaper than in England or the US, e-books are more expensive. Paper and e-books end up costing about the same.

OK, in that case, I apologize for my outburst. Without knowing about the situation in France, it basically looked to me as if MacAnDàil was asking people with little money to explain why they can't eat large amounts of caviar.

[Travis B.]

But but paper is better than screens so poor people would pay for paper books if only they knew what's best for them!

I don't necessarily agree with MacAnDàil on the dangers of screens; but the article's conclusions were that kids relate to paper books better. This fits in with my experience. (Toddlers like to interact with books in a physical way, which you can't do with an e-book, for instance.)

I get that is what the article actually said, but MacAnDàil was using that article to support the view that 'screens bad paper good' overall, which it does not actually support in the general case.

[Ares Land]

However, nothing prevents us from substituting these with other sources. The sun can be replaced with thorium reactors. Ecology can be replaced with imported materials and artificial tools. If materials are imported from under the ground or outer space, it may technically no longer be a part of any ecological closed loop.

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk.

Seriously, though, not, you can't replace the environment. From a physicist point of view, yeah, the environment is a machine that turns solar energy into the specific kind of biomass we need and the climate we need to thrive. The tricky part is we don't really understand, or can substitute the bits in the middle.
Human beings have been hit by quite a few natural disasters this past year. There was nothing much we could do to prevent it.

What's wrong with romanticizing nature, besides? I personally would very much like to preserve woods, lakes, rivers and mountains as they are.

An ecology without economies of scale can no longer support our current population.

If you are not willing to make essential goods cheaper, you have nothing to offer the majority of humanity. They will vote for the other side whether they are fascist or not, whether they save the environment or destroy it, whether or not they will be directly responsible for the slaughter of their own grandkids.

In a given developed country, agriculture is about 1% of GDP; construction maybe 5%. From a degrowth perspective, we could cut the economy to ten percent its size and still not starve.

The inescapable conclusion is that much of human labour goes to non-essential stuff ('bullshit jobs', in David Graeber's words). This is an ethical problem already (I'm willing to work for the essentials, not to make shareholders happy) but the thing is, the current economic activity is destroying our environment in various ways: there's global warming, plus loss of biodiversity, soil artificialization, the works -- more generally, refer to the natural disasters I mentioned above.

In 1924 most of the ills in the world could probably be chalked down to insufficient production. Not so in 2024: we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone. There are more than enough goods to go around; the trouble is, you have to please a shareholder somewhere to get access to them.
As for economies of scale; again, that's problem that was fixed long ago and we're now seriously into excessive optimization.

I think you might enjoy reading into degrowth; suprrisingly, a fair bit of Marxism goes into it

That article argues for the importance of cities, not their lower ecological impact.

I'm positive zompist had something on this. If humans restrict themselves to cities, that could be better for the environment than us cutting down forests and spreading out all over the map. Of course, this would mean making the cities environmentally friendly first. Was it called Cities of the Future?

Yes, though I can't remember where that was -- in an older rant, I think. That cities can be environmentally friendly, more so than rural settlements in some areas is a point that needed to be made.
Concluding that humans should restrict themselves to cities, or restrict themselves to the countryside for that matter, is taking it too far. There isn't a single correct lifestyle. Not everyone is suited to city life, or people may enjoy it at some point in their life and find it inconvenient later.
There are quite a few medieval villages around here; I like how many of these have a pretty small footprint -- small, but relatively densely populated settlements. It looks about ideal. (Unfortunately, urban/suburban sprawl is still the more fashionable option.)

[malloc]

In 1924 most of the ills in the world could probably be chalked down to insufficient production. Not so in 2024: we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone. There are more than enough goods to go around; the trouble is, you have to please a shareholder somewhere to get access to them.

Quite. Growth is valuable up to a point but there eventually come diminishing returns and growing costs. It is good and necessary for an infant to grow into an adult but hardly beneficial for an adult to continue growing until they're fifty meters tall.

[keenir]

In 1924 most of the ills in the world could probably be chalked down to insufficient production. Not so in 2024: we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone. There are more than enough goods to go around; the trouble is, you have to please a shareholder somewhere to get access to them.

Quite. Growth is valuable up to a point but there eventually come diminishing returns and growing costs. It is good and necessary for an infant to grow into an adult but hardly beneficial for an adult to continue growing until they're fifty meters tall.

Oh I don't know, we get some pretty fantastic actresses that way.



(please let that joke have succeeded)

[Lērisama]

There are quite a few ways to get books cheaply, or even for free: libraries, secondhand books, borrowing from a friend, donations, public bookcases. None of these work with ebooks.
Most libraries do offer ways to borrow e-books (I've been involved in such a project myself ) -- it's not nearly as convenient as the traditional way.

For what it's worth, when the public library is a ≥25 min walk away, taking the bus is slower, my city is too small for any more fun public transport and I can't drive, being able to borrow e-books is really convenient. The problem is you are at the mercy of the service your library's chosen for it. We've been through three so far. The first one was amazing, then it stopped working and we had to use the one by the same people which was awful¹, then the library worked that out, and swapped to a different service².

¹ admittedly mostly in comparison – I don't think it was that bad, just so much worse than the original
² still not as good as the first one, of course

[Ares Land]

There are quite a few ways to get books cheaply, or even for free: libraries, secondhand books, borrowing from a friend, donations, public bookcases. None of these work with ebooks.
Most libraries do offer ways to borrow e-books (I've been involved in such a project myself ) -- it's not nearly as convenient as the traditional way.

For what it's worth, when the public library is a ≥25 min walk away, taking the bus is slower, my city is too small for any more fun public transport and I can't drive, being able to borrow e-books is really convenient. The problem is you are at the mercy of the service your library's chosen for it. We've been through three so far. The first one was amazing, then it stopped working and we had to use the one by the same people which was awful¹, then the library worked that out, and swapped to a different service².

¹ admittedly mostly in comparison – I don't think it was that bad, just so much worse than the original
² still not as good as the first one, of course

The services available on the market aren't necessarily very good -- one problem is securing the rights. Publishers tend to offer pretty bad conditions. The other part of the problem is, as often happens in the public sector, having to deal with the lowest bidder

[Travis B.]

So, our once-and-future Great Leader has, in close succession, proposed Canada becoming the 51st state, the US seizing the Panama Canal, and the US buying Greenland...

[alice]

So, our once-and-future Great Leader has, in close succession, proposed Canada becoming the 51st state, the US seizing the Panama Canal, and the US buying Greenland...

He'll be after Guam and the US Virgin Islands next.

[Travis B.]

So, our once-and-future Great Leader has, in close succession, proposed Canada becoming the 51st state, the US seizing the Panama Canal, and the US buying Greenland...

He'll be after Guam and the US Virgin Islands next.

Somehow I suspect that Trump forgets that Canada probably won't consistently vote Republican...

[keenir]

So, our once-and-future Great Leader has, in close succession, proposed Canada becoming the 51st state, the US seizing the Panama Canal, and the US buying Greenland...

He'll be after Guam and the US Virgin Islands next.

not sure which will scare Republicans more (because we know Great Leader fears nothing totally nothing absolutely greatly nothing)...

...that the Virgin Islands isn't a description.
or
...the sheer voting power of a one-state Canada in the Congress and House.

[rotting bones]

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk.

The other tech leaders are not much better than Musk. A lot of Silicon Valley supported the right because they think the left no longer supports tech.

Seriously, though, not, you can't replace the environment.

There's a difference between the environment and ecology. Mars is a part of the environment but no ecology. We can absolutely exploit ecologies to benefit us. That's how our population is so large.

From a physicist point of view, yeah, the environment is a machine that turns solar energy into the specific kind of biomass we need and the climate we need to thrive. The tricky part is we don't really understand, or can substitute the bits in the middle.

We know enough about it for agriculture. Without the green revolutions, many of us would still be starving.

Human beings have been hit by quite a few natural disasters this past year. There was nothing much we could do to prevent it.

We have gotten much better at it than we were in the past.

What's wrong with romanticizing nature, besides? I personally would very much like to preserve woods, lakes, rivers and mountains as they are.

There's a difference between preservation and romanticism. Some leftists are under the impression that a certain kind of aesthetics leads to virtuous politics. My life has been a never-ending disproof of that theory. IIRC this video talks about how it benefits the far right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImF0y1-aTQY

But most people are not far right. Under capitalism, ordinary people are in competition with the environment. If you talk about it lovingly, they think you are against them.

In a given developed country, agriculture is about 1% of GDP; construction maybe 5%. From a degrowth perspective, we could cut the economy to ten percent its size and still not starve.

Money is not real. "% of the GDP" measures how much rich people want certain goods. The only thing this tells us is that rich people aren't starving, so they're investing in bling instead.

The inescapable conclusion is that much of human labour goes to non-essential stuff ('bullshit jobs', in David Graeber's words). This is an ethical problem already (I'm willing to work for the essentials, not to make shareholders happy) but the thing is, the current economic activity is destroying our environment in various ways: there's global warming, plus loss of biodiversity, soil artificialization, the works -- more generally, refer to the natural disasters I mentioned above.

In 1924 most of the ills in the world could probably be chalked down to insufficient production. Not so in 2024: we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone. There are more than enough goods to go around; the trouble is, you have to please a shareholder somewhere to get access to them.
As for economies of scale; again, that's problem that was fixed long ago and we're now seriously into excessive optimization.

I think you might enjoy reading into degrowth; suprrisingly, a fair bit of Marxism goes into it

A lot of production is languishing from a lack of investment. Layoffs happen because unprofitability lowers production even if the products are needed.

As for food, it's different for different countries. Some countries might be developed enough that more production is unnecessary in an abstract sense.

My point is that economic factors are relevant either way. Even if you have enough production to feed everyone, it's an illusion. If you distribute that food to the masses, then that production will no longer be there.

Farmers have to work to feed us. Under capitalism, human industry only happens in exchange for monetary profit. The production of food happens when capitalists think they can make a profit from producing it.

I can only repeat myself again and again in every context: If you don't give profit to business owners, they won't invest in AKA organize production, and production is needed to feed people. We can no longer feed the population by hunting and gathering. And we can't simply redistribute capitalist production either.

If food is not scarce, capitalists won't invest in agriculture because it won't turn a profit. This is not because capitalists are evil. This is the bedrock of what the capitalist system is built to accomplish: turning a profit. After the famine happens, there will be investment in agriculture again.

This doesn't mean you can't feed everyone. It means capitalist agriculture is against the interests of the human race.

[MacAnDàil]

However, nothing prevents us from substituting these with other sources. The sun can be replaced with thorium reactors. Ecology can be replaced with imported materials and artificial tools. If materials are imported from under the ground or outer space, it may technically no longer be a part of any ecological closed loop.

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk.

Seriously, though, not, you can't replace the environment. From a physicist point of view, yeah, the environment is a machine that turns solar energy into the specific kind of biomass we need and the climate we need to thrive. The tricky part is we don't really understand, or can substitute the bits in the middle.
Human beings have been hit by quite a few natural disasters this past year. There was nothing much we could do to prevent it.

What's wrong with romanticizing nature, besides? I personally would very much like to preserve woods, lakes, rivers and mountains as they are.

An ecology without economies of scale can no longer support our current population.

If you are not willing to make essential goods cheaper, you have nothing to offer the majority of humanity. They will vote for the other side whether they are fascist or not, whether they save the environment or destroy it, whether or not they will be directly responsible for the slaughter of their own grandkids.

In a given developed country, agriculture is about 1% of GDP; construction maybe 5%. From a degrowth perspective, we could cut the economy to ten percent its size and still not starve.

The inescapable conclusion is that much of human labour goes to non-essential stuff ('bullshit jobs', in David Graeber's words). This is an ethical problem already (I'm willing to work for the essentials, not to make shareholders happy) but the thing is, the current economic activity is destroying our environment in various ways: there's global warming, plus loss of biodiversity, soil artificialization, the works -- more generally, refer to the natural disasters I mentioned above.

In 1924 most of the ills in the world could probably be chalked down to insufficient production. Not so in 2024: we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone. There are more than enough goods to go around; the trouble is, you have to please a shareholder somewhere to get access to them.
As for economies of scale; again, that's problem that was fixed long ago and we're now seriously into excessive optimization.

I think you might enjoy reading into degrowth; suprrisingly, a fair bit of Marxism goes into it

That article argues for the importance of cities, not their lower ecological impact.

I'm positive zompist had something on this. If humans restrict themselves to cities, that could be better for the environment than us cutting down forests and spreading out all over the map. Of course, this would mean making the cities environmentally friendly first. Was it called Cities of the Future?

Yes, though I can't remember where that was -- in an older rant, I think. That cities can be environmentally friendly, more so than rural settlements in some areas is a point that needed to be made.
Concluding that humans should restrict themselves to cities, or restrict themselves to the countryside for that matter, is taking it too far. There isn't a single correct lifestyle. Not everyone is suited to city life, or people may enjoy it at some point in their life and find it inconvenient later.
There are quite a few medieval villages around here; I like how many of these have a pretty small footprint -- small, but relatively densely populated settlements. It looks about ideal. (Unfortunately, urban/suburban sprawl is still the more fashionable option.)

yes to pretty much everything except the distinction that Rotting brought between romanticising and preserving.

First step when someone makes an affirmation should be “is this true?” before thinking “what should be done about the stated problem”. Also, realise that others see you differently from how you see yourself.

Yes, and I don't believe voters don't know what Trump stands for after how loud he's been about it for 8 years.

Certainly, for us who pay attention and have developed decent ideas on the subject, it seems incredible.

If production falls, there would still be more than enough to go around because so much is wasted e.g. food thrown in the bucket. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/03/1148036

At least for food, they have the excuse that a lot of it will go bad on the way. A much bigger problem is that capitalist industries typically refuse to donate the results of overproduction. Their primary concern is that if scarcity falls, prices will fall, and they won't be able to recover their losses.

Under capitalism, even the term "overproduction" means too much production to sell at a profit, not too much production for people to use.

Indeed, people eating the food should be the objective in food production. And, yes, donating the results of overproduction would be much better than the shops throwing it buckets and covering it in bleach. Food may be wasted at various other steps e.g. by overpricing, not reducing before the sell-by date, overbuying (partly due to overadvertising). And that’s without mentioning the packaging.

On advertising, 1° at least online ads, there is an argument of give and take but, for IRL ads e.g. billboards, it’s harder to make such an argument.
2° exposure to ads unfortunately largely outpaces exposure to science.

And food doesn’t come from the economy, it comes from ecology. After all, having no money and food growing all around is much better than having trillions of dollars on a burning infertile planet.

I didn't argue against environmentalism. Under socialism, it may really be the case that goods come primarily from environmental factors rather than work.

I did not necessarily think you argued against environmentalism, I took the opportunity to argue for it.

Besides, I don't believe you think this. If the economy doesn't do anything, abolish copyright law. If you care about what happens, stop boosting signals that no one believes. Please stop romanticizing the environment so that we can save it.

I did not say the economy does nothing, I said it does not produce food. Ecology is more important than economy for food and life in general.

Goods come from the pipeline: Nuclear power, raw materials/tools and industry (and distribution, but that's another topic). What you call "ecology" provides raw materials, only one factor in production. Without industry, energy and materials can't be shaped into the forms sapient beings need for sustenance.

Sapient beings such as ourselves can eat raw materials for sustenance: fruit, nuts, seeds. Even if we talk transformation, cooking is much older than industry. Do you consider cooking a part of industry?

The default source of nuclear power is the sun. The default source of raw materials and tools is the immediate environment (i.e. ecology). Whatever animation you observe in the environment is thanks to the sun's nuclear power.

I think by nuclear power, you mean nuclear reactions. Is that the case?

However, nothing prevents us from substituting these with other sources. The sun can be replaced with thorium reactors. Ecology can be replaced with imported materials and artificial tools. If materials are imported from under the ground or outer space, it may technically no longer be a part of any ecological closed loop.

This is hypothetically possible one day. For the moment, we are far from that.

Neither economy nor ecology are real, only particles interacting in space. There is ultimately no balance or primordial harmony to return to.

Economy exists because of humans, humans exist because of ecology. So ecology is primordial. Unless we consider outer space which may be interesting and important but not necessarily related to the economy.

Money is not a shorthand for goods at all. It may be a means to obtain them but it is not the goods itself.

In context, "we need money" actually means "we need goods".

It may also mean “we need services” or “we want goods or services” or “we want power”.

Producing more goods is a problem on a planet with limited resources where the resources have been overused for more than half a century.

An ecology without economies of scale can no longer support our current population.

If you are not willing to make essential goods cheaper, you have nothing to offer the majority of humanity. They will vote for the other side whether they are fascist or not, whether they save the environment or destroy it, whether or not they will be directly responsible for the slaughter of their own grandkids.

We can make essential goods cheaper and reduce production of goods, notably unessential goods, which as Ares pointed out, forms the majority of goods produced. One way to make essential goods cheaper without increasing production is to enforce price limits. These already exist in Réunion.

The megacorps often accept the rules. They want to apply them in the sneakiest, most profitable way but, when something gets banned, they often change tack and advertise how great they are for making the change when the change was made because of the law change.

This is a case in point: the supermarkets put up high prices until the now-deputy Jean-Hugues Ratenon and others made strikes and the prefecture put their ideas of price blocks into place. Now, the supermarkets boast about how they put into place the Bouclier Qualité Prix.

This would have been extended to the whole of France had the New Popular Front gotten a total majority instead of a plurality. It may still be the case if Bayrou gets kicked out and a left-wing prime minister gets put in place instead.

That article argues for the importance of cities, not their lower ecological impact.

I'm positive zompist had something on this. If humans restrict themselves to cities, that could be better for the environment than us cutting down forests and spreading out all over the map. Of course, this would mean making the cities environmentally friendly first. Was it called Cities of the Future?

Certainly, it is better for everyone to live in cities than cutting down forests. And, yes, cities and countryside should be made more environmentally friendly. It is also possible to live outwith a city without cutting down forests.

What do mean by capitalism?

Production through the profit motive.

By profit, do you mean monetary or any profit?

So your approach to morality involves minimising harm?

It's not a moral position, just a Nash equilibrium.

Could it not be both?

What does redistribution mean to you?

Under capitalism, redistribution means snatching profits out of the mouths of ravenous business owners. If there is no profit, then the owners of nature will not be motivated to feed the people. If you redistribute this profit, then that lowers their incentive to produce. There is nothing wrong with redistribution from socialized industries.

If you redistribute their earnings, the businesses will become less profitable. If businesses become less profitable, it will be harder for people to find jobs. Even if the corporations manage to produce enough for everyone, they will artificially restrict distribution to prevent prices from falling.

For some reason, contemporary leftist intellectuals feel that these are weird, out of the way concerns compared to things like the environment. If you take away anything from my posts, I want to impress upon you that most of humanity would rather destroy the environment and wipe out all life if they can't fix these factors. Until the ivory tower left puts this at the center of their discourse, the world will keep sliding farther and farther towards fascism.

Who are the owners of nature? Do you have proof for this argument?

What is your alternative? Is it mutually incompatible with redistribution?

The problem is that production is currently skewed towards the interests of the wealthy. We need to measure demand by the popular vote instead of currency.

That's the basic idea. If you search, I have it elaborated in various degrees of detail in the past.

For background reading, try Classical Econophysics by Paul Cockshott: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15v5e44 ... sp=sharing

Certainly, production would better be based on demand by popular vote than by currency. Or by consequences on the environment, health and education. Or some combination of both.

And that appears to be compatible with redistribution, whether of money, land or power.

Generally, the more coherent and thought-out moral positions make less exceptions and less arbitrary ones.

Note that the Marx suggestion is not a moral argument as such. The argument is that it's coldly rational for the dispossessed to unite and dethrone their bosses.

That it is rational does not exclude it being moral. The fact that he advocates for it implies that it is a good thing. The fact that he claims that it is applicable to anyone and everyone in the same situation also implies it is a moral position.

Morality is subjective, of course, which is why we may at most accept that some moral stances may lead to genocide, not all. One’s identity may involve one’s class, or species or anything else. Life is not just about social class. Social class may be defined in different ways, including money, identity, education or any combination thereof. That is perhaps part of the subjectivity of morality.

If morality is subjective, what does it mean to make society more moral?

Archetypical morality includes ideas about what is good vs bad applicable to everyone. By applying to everyone, the capitalist class is not above the rules.

I'm worried that women and minority empowerment programs are leading dispossessed groups to see each other as powerful rather than the actual puppet masters.

What lead you to say that?

I think the Marxist emphasis on work is much better at bringing the disempowered together. I think today's aversion to work is a passing fad. According to Marx, one's work is what gives meaning to human life. People's aversion to work is caused by capitalism, which incentivizes both underworking and overworking at the same time for no rationally justifiable reason.

Capitalism may be a factor in aversion to work and some parenting also. I disliked the idea of working as a child because it meant performing tasks I did not understanding the meaning of and was often reprimanded for doing badly. Indeed, engagement is what gives meaning.

The one thing that everyone is definitely concerned with is life. Focussing on life may therefore bring the disempowered together.

I know other people I know think differently, as neighbour, friend, family member and activist. I do not believe in the interest of moorality because it is the only thing I am exposed to but because it is among the most convincing things that I am exposed to. When Zompist proposes to base our ideas and practices on science and moral philosophy, I get him on that. When Ryan Holiday, following on from Stoics and other ancient philosophers suggests basing our decisions on virtue, I get him too. Likewise with Stephen R. Covey and the importance on aligning oneself with one’s values. These are somewhat different positions but share characteristics: 1° based on morality, ethics, virtue 2° things I have read 3° things I have recently and rarely been exposed to 4° are convincing

Do you realize that the people who want mass deportations think they are enforcing moral principles?

Do you mean all people who want mass deportations think they are enforcing moral principles or some people who want mass deportations think they are enforcing moral principles?

Do you realize that the Roman elites who opposed the grain dole based their ideology on Stoic principles?

In my short search, I found nothing to back that up. I did find something that appears to imply the reverse: https://www.unrv.com/government/social ... ograms.php

Basically, it's not enough to appeal to abstract morality, which most people don't care about anyway. What we need is action in favor of the disadvantaged.

This is not to say you can't use morality, even Stoic morality, to draw inspiration.

Action in favour of the disadvantaged is great and often takes courage, a virtue. Most people don’t pay attention much to abstract morality because they do not pay attention much to abstraction because they are undereducated and overdistracted.

I can't speak for Travis, but I'm generally skeptical of "everything was better in the past" texts. And I find "those new ways of doing things are ruining everything" positions especially depressing when they're held by people who are supposedly politically on the Left. To see pre-modernity as better than modernity is a fundamentally reactionary position. And of course reactionaries have great pseudo-academic talking points to bolster their positions.

There is nothing about "everything was better in the past". It's this specific point that was better in the past and can be better in the future.

You essentially imply that the whole digital revolution was bad and wrong and we should just scrap computers and go back to reading paper books and newspapers typeset on Linotype machines (as, after all, reading things on paper is 'better' than reading things on 'screens' because a 'scientific' paper tells us so).

No, that is not my position. I said overuse, not use, of screens was problem. If more people read more books and newspapers, that would be better than wasting time on social media. That does not mean abandoning computers entirely. I would not abandon e.g. Wikipedia Library, Libreoffice, SumatraPdf or, most relevantly, Leechblock.

Are there other scientific articles you are sceptical about?

You speak as if because something is positioned as 'scientific' it should be accepted without consideration.

Not necessarily accepted without consideration but at least given greater value than one’s first impressions.

Reactionaries are not necessarily opposed to digital technology. After all, the first French political party to have a website was the FN and the first French presidential candidate to declare his intention on Youtube was Zemmour. Reactionaries are opposed to emancipation, not novelty.

Yes, but unquestioning glorification of the past is commonly a feature of reactionary ideologies.
[/quote]1° Unquestioning glorification of the past is not what I propose. I propose questioning one’s own behaviour in order to improve it.

2° Reactionary ideologies from that of Mussolini to that of Peter Thiel are just as much about glorification of the future as they are of the past. It’s called reactionary modernism.

Are there other scientific articles you are sceptical about?

You speak as if because something is positioned as 'scientific' it should be accepted without consideration.

Case in point ─ eugenics. During the time it was popular it was widely seen as 'scientific', with many 'scientific' writings being published on it in its heyday, yet in retrospect that made it no more valid. Just because something is published in a scientific journal does not mean that it should be simply unquestioningly accepted because of that.

That is an example, a rare one. During the same period, the general population probably also held erroneous beliefs regarding race. Therefore, even if does not hold that a ll scientific knowledge ever would always be better than all non-science ever, it nevertheless holds that, all other things being equal, scientific knowledge is generally better than non-science produced by the same society.

I'm too poor to have books without screens.

How?

How will we get enough paper to educate everyone? Dead Congolese is at least reusable Congolese.

If I understand this argument, paper books would be harder to come by and less reusable than screen ones. Is that it?

If books can't be spread through screens, books would be rare. If books were rare, people like me wouldn't have access to books. If we didn't have access to books, we would be uneducated. If we were uneducated, we'd vote for fascists even more than we do now. The actual solution is more education by any means necessary, and more critical thinking as opposed to memorizing textbooks.

1° Indeed, more education is of course great, as is more critical thinking as well as memorising. Memorising helps critical thinking by being exposed to the relevant material of the discipline, rather than approaching each new material as a blank slate, unaware to what extent it corresponds to reality.

2° Sure, screen books are definitely better than no books. I did not argue for books not being spread through screens, just that paper version have several advantages in terms of engagement, memory and concentration. I may nuance my argument by recognising, as does Desmurget, that they have the find function that is often practical, especially for syntopical reading (cf. How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler & Charles Van Doren) and font size change.

That article argues for the importance of cities, not their lower ecological impact.

You can derive the lower ecological impact of cities from plain common sense. It takes less energy to heat up a small apartment than a big house. Even if the apartment and the house are the same same size, if the apartment is surrounded by other apartments, it is still easier to heat.

And then there's the fact that there's generally less physical infrastructure per person in the city - fewer meters of roads and rails per person, fewer buses to serve more people, and so on.

OK, there is more direct impact economies of scale, and there is more indirect impact because citydwellers are more often often early adopters.

Just noticed this:

I'm too poor to have books without screens.

How?

Really, Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, anyone? If you read paper books, you know what they cost. I trust you to have some familiarity with the financial situation of poor people, both in the richer and in the poorer parts of the world. So how can you ask this question?

Now, if you don't visit online stores as a matter of principle, you might not know this, but when a place sells both paper books and electronic books, the electronic versions are usually cheaper - sometimes they cost only half as much as the paper version, or even less. And that's before we get to the possibility of breaking laws.

You might object that the device with the screen costs money, too, which is true, but for an intense reader, it won't take long to recover that money by saving money on individual books.

Frankly, that "How?" made you look a bit like a hostile opponent's stereotypical version of people with your kinds of political views.

I have some familiarity with the financial situation of poor people in rich countries, less so in poor countries. When my income was a fraction of its current level a few years ago, I got most of both paper and electronic books from public libraries therefore the price was the same and still do. Also, I buy many books secondhand as my parents did when I was little and neither had a job or my dad was a truck driver or student. When I was at ISM Dhanbad, there was a university library. It surprised me how few of the books were in Indian languages. But there are surely other books that Rotting wants access to but does not have access to on paper.

But but paper is better than screens so poor people would pay for paper books if only they knew what's best for them!

No, the government would provide better public services e.g. free libraries and schools in every neighbourhood and free universities in every town. And libraries in every school and university of course.

Really, Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, anyone? If you read paper books, you know what they cost. I trust you to have some familiarity with the financial situation of poor people, both in the richer and in the poorer parts of the world. So how can you ask this question?

Now, if you don't visit online stores as a matter of principle, you might not know this, but when a place sells both paper books and electronic books, the electronic versions are usually cheaper - sometimes they cost only half as much as the paper version, or even less. And that's before we get to the possibility of breaking laws.

E-books being cheaper than paper books is true of the English-language market. (Maybe in Germany too, I don't read German well enough.) Here in France, paper books are cheaper than in England or the US, e-books are more expensive. Paper and e-books end up costing about the same.

There are quite a few ways to get books cheaply, or even for free: libraries, secondhand books, borrowing from a friend, donations, public bookcases. None of these work with ebooks.
Most libraries do offer ways to borrow e-books (I've been involved in such a project myself ) -- it's not nearly as convenient as the traditional way.

But but paper is better than screens so poor people would pay for paper books if only they knew what's best for them!

I don't necessarily agree with MacAnDàil on the dangers of screens; but the article's conclusions were that kids relate to paper books better. This fits in with my experience. (Toddlers like to interact with books in a physical way, which you can't do with an e-book, for instance.)

Yes exactly except that I would clarify that the problem is the overuse (and misuse) of screens, not screens themselves.

But but paper is better than screens so poor people would pay for paper books if only they knew what's best for them!

I don't necessarily agree with MacAnDàil on the dangers of screens; but the article's conclusions were that kids relate to paper books better. This fits in with my experience. (Toddlers like to interact with books in a physical way, which you can't do with an e-book, for instance.)

I get that is what the article actually said, but MacAnDàil was using that article to support the view that 'screens bad paper good' overall, which it does not actually support in the general case.

I gave three examples of the 58+218+308+264+150+306+60+10=1294 references that Desmurget cites in his book Faites-les lire and the 4+115+ 644+1082+3=1848 he cites in La fabrique du crétin digital. So one of those sources obviously only contains a three-thousandth of the general idea. He himself says that it’s not because we type essays on a computer that we can leave children to mess around on a digiphone or console for hours on end.

There are quite a few ways to get books cheaply, or even for free: libraries, secondhand books, borrowing from a friend, donations, public bookcases. None of these work with ebooks.
Most libraries do offer ways to borrow e-books (I've been involved in such a project myself ) -- it's not nearly as convenient as the traditional way.

For what it's worth, when the public library is a ≥25 min walk away, taking the bus is slower, my city is too small for any more fun public transport and I can't drive, being able to borrow e-books is really convenient. The problem is you are at the mercy of the service your library's chosen for it. We've been through three so far. The first one was amazing, then it stopped working and we had to use the one by the same people which was awful¹, then the library worked that out, and swapped to a different service².

¹ admittedly mostly in comparison – I don't think it was that bad, just so much worse than the original
² still not as good as the first one, of course

The services available on the market aren't necessarily very good -- one problem is securing the rights. Publishers tend to offer pretty bad conditions. The other part of the problem is, as often happens in the public sector, having to deal with the lowest bidder

We could get better public services if the main criterion was quality, not price.

[MacAnDàil]

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk.

The other tech leaders are not much better than Musk. A lot of Silicon Valley supported the right because they think the left no longer supports tech.

Unless I am mistaken, you often make Marxist-inspired arguments. Here they are relevant: a lot of tech company bosses supported the right because they are company bosses.

From a physicist point of view, yeah, the environment is a machine that turns solar energy into the specific kind of biomass we need and the climate we need to thrive. The tricky part is we don't really understand, or can substitute the bits in the middle.

We know enough about it for agriculture. Without the green revolutions, many of us would still be starving.

Why do you say that?

[Ares Land]

I'd love to this tested out sometimes, preferably not by Elon Musk.

The other tech leaders are not much better than Musk. A lot of Silicon Valley supported the right because they think the left no longer supports tech.

Entirely agree. Though it has taken about one month before Silicon Valley right-wingers and other kinds of right-wingers started going for each other throats over visas, and on some level I find this pretty entertaining.

Seriously, though, not, you can't replace the environment.

There's a difference between the environment and ecology. Mars is a part of the environment but no ecology. We can absolutely exploit ecologies to benefit us. That's how our population is so large.

Exploiting the ecology or our natural environment (whichever you prefer) did degrade it in ways we cannot fix. We'll never get pre-industrial climate back; extinct species are, well, extinct, no bringing them back either.

We know enough about it for agriculture. Without the green revolutions, many of us would still be starving.

Some aspects of the green revolution and more generally modern agriculture were immensely helpful; others were not so smart. We're barely starting to figure out which.

On negative effects of modern agricultures, we can mention global warming (fertilizers are a huge contributor, among other factors), nitrates in our water, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, soil degradation.

The green revolution was fair for the 1960s, and again helped immensely. But this is 2024, we've learned a lot since, and one of things we've learned is that you approach ecosystems with some caution.

We've moved from the environment being an unknown unknown to a known unknown; this is actually progress.

Being able to feed billions is great but the way we're doing it is just not sustainable; we cannot keep warming the climate, or destroying the water table, or causing cancer in rural populations.

What's wrong with romanticizing nature, besides? I personally would very much like to preserve woods, lakes, rivers and mountains as they are.

There's a difference between preservation and romanticism. Some leftists are under the impression that a certain kind of aesthetics leads to virtuous politics. My life has been a never-ending disproof of that theory. IIRC this video talks about how it benefits the far right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImF0y1-aTQY

Not my point though. I -- and many others -- also want to preserve nature for nature's sake. I don't believe it leads to virtuous politics or anything of that sort.

In a given developed country, agriculture is about 1% of GDP; construction maybe 5%. From a degrowth perspective, we could cut the economy to ten percent its size and still not starve.

Money is not real. "% of the GDP" measures how much rich people want certain goods. The only thing this tells us is that rich people aren't starving, so they're investing in bling instead.

We could go on all day on how GDP is a poor measure. So let's try another metric.
In France, 1.5% of the workforce are farmers. In the US, it's 1.7%. Both these countries produce more than enough food to feed themselves.

As for food, it's different for different countries. Some countries might be developed enough that more production is unnecessary in an abstract sense.

Yes, of course. The Western world is largely busy with bullshit jobs; conditions are different in less developed countries. This still suggest that past a certain point, economic growth is not always a necessity.

I can only repeat myself again and again in every context: If you don't give profit to business owners, they won't invest in AKA organize production, and production is needed to feed people. We can no longer feed the population by hunting and gathering. And we can't simply redistribute capitalist production either.

If food is not scarce, capitalists won't invest in agriculture because it won't turn a profit. This is not because capitalists are evil. This is the bedrock of what the capitalist system is built to accomplish: turning a profit. After the famine happens, there will be investment in agriculture again.

I don't disagree with that. An interesting point is that agriculture is not entirely market-run. In the EU there's the Common Agriculture Policy, and a lot of agriculture relies on subsidies. From what I hear of the US, farmers do rely on subsidies too (or at least farming subsidies seem to be an important political issue.)

Leaving degrowth entirely aside (as I said, I'm a bit on the fence on the issue), I don't think an economy can be entirely market led and be sustainable. There has to be quite a bit of planning involved. I think this is getting increasingly obvious, as a) environmental damage is now impossible to ignore b) wealth accumulation reached a critical level.