Interesting thread of comments. I kept upvoting both sides of the comments when good points were made.

I think you lost me with Cuba. Probably would’ve been better to come back with evidence of the 20-30 years claim, or a cited example of some of the systemic dysfunction of life in the USSR instead of jumping to Cuba, arguably the worst current example to pick.

Edit: my bad, you have more responses to others.

When you say dense… what is it we’re… talking about?.. 😏

Necause you misspelled ‘but’ I then had to read your comment with a Scottish accent.

Unable to attend an event as its too late at night for me where I am. Does anyone know if theres recordings posted anywhere? I’d like to see what people talk about in these more free flowing sessions. Plus a couple of the speakers opening the days look interesting.

Whats a trifecta? Is it House, Senate, Governorship?

So, the Republicans control more, due to winning more State Senates and Governorships but there are more, in raw number of reps, Democrats elected to the State Houses?

So each State can send as many reps to the House as they want?

I’m not sure how a larger population in a State translates into more Federal House seats for that State.

I assumed the whole number of seats allocated to each State in the House was set. But i’ve never really had reason to question that assumption.

Good point. The gerrymandering has been exploited more by the Republicans, so they have less to gain from further redistricting.

Thats fair

So, when this latest round of gerrymandering kicked off it was stated this was a contest the Democrats would ultimately lose because they control fewer US States.

In the last few days there’s been some triumphalism as two? or three? Democrat run States have redistricted. But based on the assumption that Republican States do the same, this isn’t actually good news.

Am I out of the loop on some developments here?

Are Democratic run States finding it easier to redistrict than Republican run? Or is there some tangible reason theres an air of triumphalism?

Or are people not appreciating the wider arms-race-like contest and focusing too much on small wins out of context?

He explained the tariffs really concisely. Its been too hard to keep up with what is actually on or off.

Thanks for the recommendation.

I’d heard of Forster, but never made the time. After reading the first few pages of The Machine Stops it looks interesting. The hyper drive for ‘efficiency’, presented as rational but leading to absurdities I think fits our times and the dissatisfaction with Classical and Neoliberal economic policies, likely the culture war driven faux-Christian morality of many as well.

I think its time to have a look at Forster more carefully. He was involved in the Bloomsbury Set, which is where I’d heard of him before.

I don’t know why software engineers being on lemmy, so are using activitypub, are so down and out about industry job cuts. Don’t get me wrong, change of industry might be on the cards, but that doesn’t mean being a software engineer stops, and these proof of concept sites and networks are a revelation.

There are so many projects for software engineers. For example, Activitypub is the chance to develop a genuinely healthy market of small to medium sized networked social media sites that are far more reactive to users, unique, and experimental than the likes of engagement driven fb could ever be.

I don’t know, the rivers of gold might be over for a portion of ‘big’ tech software engineers, but it seems like a super exciting time to be in small enterprise software engineering, with the plethora amount of projects that could be being explored.

Of course there are heaps of other non-social media software engineering small scale projects, i just focused on activitypub here because it seems so strange and obvious to a rando like me.

They are such good memories. I remember as a kid in the cold winter huddled up to my desk lamp, that got super warm and was the only source of heat, painting my Catachan armoured column…

why yes, I did not understand how to use the Catachans as a jungle army, how could you tell?

This was my personal response to the argument the post posed. So I definitely align with you on your value statement, and that annecdote is just such a typical example of shithead behaviour.

But I probably don’t agree as much on its obvious relevency, which of course it is, leading to it being incuded in the discussion. What I worry about is discussions like this thread jumping from link to link and in the process flattening the distinguishing features of different propositions.

We’re agreed on having a good baseline set by government.

Don’t know why some companies adding other benefits “feels like the real discrimination that shouldn’t be there”, sounds like advocating for a dictatorship of employment law, as I say before a command and control system.

I probably did a better job explaining my position in the response here

All benefits - if any, should be decided on a government level

Thats not the same suggestion as a healthy social support system.

An example of a healthy social support system could be where the government sets a baseline of standards that must be met, but businesses can go above that in a competitive reachbfor employees.

What was suggested by OP was far tighter, where the top line and base line were controlled by the government. Those systems are referred to as command and control systems, the most famous example of which is probably the USSR, maybe in that conglomeration the GDR might be the best example, for its good and horrifying aspects.

You and I are probably having different underlying assumptions about the connotations relating to communism though. Its not a spectre haunting europe for me, thats fascism.

I think its important to be able to comment on all systems of governance in a reflective and complex systems driven way. By understanding the drawbacks by comparison with other systems, even when those other systems failed, we can understand our own systems more clearly.

Tight command and control systems, like you’re advocating here, are hard to manage. Too many competing interests. Its the primary reason 20th Century style communism failed, and they had an honest to god good go at it. Moving away from such a tight system is a key reason why China has been so successful since Deng Xiaoping.

Thats not the argument though, its a ‘with kids’ versus ‘without kids’ comparison.

This is an argument for equality based on an individuals rights. A more robust argument for equality is Peter Singer’s equal consideration of interests.

Jeremy Bentham argued that a being’s capacity to suffer is what is morally relevant when considering their interests, not their capacity for reason. Equal considwration of interests - Wikipedia

For example: In a situation where an equal sum of time is given to everyone without considering the individual’s interests, and those of people that rely on said person (eg, children, disabled, elderly), we would have increased neglect and less efficient systems of division of labour. Thereby negatively effecting the society as a whole and in time that individual who had an increased time allotted who doesn’t necessarily have a need for it.

Its like the arguments for defunding government services, often that leads to a less safe society costing the wealthy in extra security who often are the key proponents of defunding government services.

The argument is highly related to Karl Marx’s, “From each accoding to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Maybe less prescriptive than Marx’s argument.

Not until the US realises the systemic issues supporting the populist despots position. I’ll focus on the two party system below.

If the Democratic Party truly want to improve the USA what they can do is break up. The duopoly can be blown up. They could do it brexit style and just completely flip the board this would inevitably lead to Republican domination but quickly without another major side to fight against their anti-democratic actions will be the only thing to talk about. A bit like how the only thing to do with brexit is ignore it, or talk about it’s costs. This would hurt the USA and democracy would go through a recession.

Another option is to recreate their party structure to only be based between clear democracy sign posts. Agree to support any democratic president that is elected, but in elections they could support their different preferred candidates. Only after an election is resolved do they fall in line behind a democratic winner. In other words be a big tent, formalise the so called ‘caucuses’ underneath the current Party as different and increasingly independent Party’s, welcome in Republican ‘caucuses’ who still believe in democracy and use the Democratic Party as the banner to build out a multi-party system at the federal level.

Its long, complicated, and probably has many flaws, but multi-party coalition Governments seem to be the worlds best chance at holding onto a liberalised and mostly Just system of governance.

So a path towards coalition multi-party democracy is what I’m essentially advocating here. Too many Republicans don’t even understand the benefits of the democratic system so I can’t see many of them have the cojones to blow up their party, they’d happily live under a dictator it seems.