HalfSalesman

In order to compete and grow, sure, reinvestment is needed. But even within capitalism, when markets are saturated the lay offs only happen because of a desire for profit growth when faced with a ceiling and they just cannibalize their own company because of perverse incentives. Cooperatives often willingly just impose pay cuts and hour cuts across the board during lean times like a market saturation and then usually endure as a result without the brain drain with their workers still "employed" at the end of the tunnel. Even if new market growth never comes, coops would simply stabilize and become easier work if become fairly low paying work. Where as capitalists tend to sell off the husk of a barely functioning firm for one last quick buck just before its usually doomed to closure from being carved up and mismanaged by leadership that no longer gives a shit.

I'm a socialist but not a strict Marxist. Even if I agree with a lot of his work, in particular I think his analysis is correct about the unsustainable relationship between labor and capitalists because of exploitation for profit, alienation, lack of control over laborer's own work, etc. That said, I find meta-narratives (by any economist or philosopher) fairly wrong headed and verging on mystical and the level of rigidity towards market's functionality regardless of potential configuration (like say into a mutualistic market system of coops) similarly wrong-headed and "prophetic". I meet that level of certainty with skepticism.

I do think that eventually a mutualist market would probably become sort of meaningless eventually and turn into something else.

Profit falling leading to imperialism seems like its because of profit/expansion driven leadership which isn't impossible under a coop model but seems fairly unlikely and is more or less a certainty under a more undemocratic and authoritarian hierarchy under capitalist enterprises.

In fact, one of worker coop's "weaknesses" is that they have a tendency to not grow at all, which has been suggested as a major reasons why they don't dominate our economy despite tending to be more resilient than conventional firms.

Because a welfare state is irrelevant to worker controlled/owned means of production and worker ownership is the defining characteristic of socialism.

A welfare state is just a welfare state.

If someone is petty enough to vote for an evil that would make the earth a significantly worse place because they had strangers being mean to them online... they're evil.

If enough people are like that, those dumb "Giant Comet 2024" bumper stickers have a point.

Further, it hardly matters anymore. Enough people were seemingly that petty, and now we might not even get another election for voting to even matter. Hell, it might barely matter anyway even if we somehow manage to still have elections, climate change is going to get significantly worse and Trump's admin is going to if anything accelerate that.

Did I say you were Nazi?

Also I specified a starting point to redemption: Not voting republican.

Wanting a good GUI doesn't mean you don't know what you are doing.

I mean, if they voted for republicans, they are villains in so far as one can be a villain.

But still for the sake of argument, what exactly do you count as villainization? Are we talking saying mean words or being critical of republican voters online? Are we talking about punching Nazis? Are we talking about cutting off friends and family from our personal lives for being politically repugnant?

If its the first thing, poor babies got their feelings hurt. Taking criticism or being shamed is not a reason to become worse. Thing is, the vast majority of vocal republican voters don't even seem to indicate that they care anyway. They seem to embrace being considered bad people.

If its the second thing, maybe don't wear Nazi uniforms, zieg heil, or draw swastikas on shit and they wont get punched. You know, stop being Nazis.

If its the final thing, we don't owe these people our personal time. I've cut off my dad as much as I feasibly can and hes only a bandwagon republican rather than full MAGA. There is no chance in hell I'll ever convince him to not vote republican. Fuck him, I don't care if hes sad he doesn't get to see me. Maybe he shouldn't support fascists.

https://www.axios.com/2025/01/09/luigi-mangione-approval-poll-gen-z

Hit the Whooper Button!

As an American, no, at least when it comes to averages. Fuck the average American.

OK, I actually think we might be getting somewhere for once. What exactly do you propose to solve that problem? Because saying people need to make more educated decisions isn't going to make it so. Most people do not want to even think about politics let alone become deeply educated about it, so its an uphill battle on somehow educating the masses before you have any actual political power to mandate that education.

I mean, I still think game theory applies with first past the post. Like for instance if you have 2 equally liked anti-racist candidates and 1 singular awful one that appeals to subconscious racism, the racist one is more likely going to win due to splitting the anti-racist vote. But still, I'm curious about your solution to the educated voting problem.

I'm saying that people who are paying attention can't know for certain that a sufficient number of other people are paying enough attention to even shift their vote from the democrats to a brand new leftwing party with sufficient "brand awareness" without undermining the lesser evil's chances by jumping over for any given major election.

Half the population pays virtually no attention to politics. Meaning trying for a third party for president is a laughably if not willfully ignorant unless you've done the ground work elsewhere in government built up awareness of the party from holding smaller offices first.