JustTesting

Wird normalerweise zu Ostasien gezählt, nicht Südostasien

I tend to agree with Schopenhauer(other than it sounding quite arrogant/condescending the way he puts it…):

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

That makes sense, though at least where I'm from it's usually not local. At least people seem to care most about soccer and ice hockey teams that are not from where they grew up or where they live. Maybe more handed down by parents?

It's mostly that shared parasocial relationships are weird to me. Like, the benefit of a parasocial relationship is that it helps with loneliness and fill social needs without any pressure. But a shared parasocial relationship, idk. You get pressure/obligations from your peers and you actually have a friend group for fulfilling social needs. at least i never felt an urge to combine my parasocial and social relationships.

I mean, if it was just some activity you did to spend time with friends, sure, i get it. But it seems like the sport itself is more central than a group of friends, to the point of getting ostracized for liking another team. Or getting into fights over which team is better, that kind of stuff. I know that's not how everyone interacts with team sports, but there is a sizable chunk of people that do take it pretty seriously, and that's where I don't follow why they do that and what they get out of it.

i think there's some sports that are a bit acquired tastes, like I don't think the skill is immediately apparent the first time watching soccer, it's "just people running around". The strategy, technique etc is not immediately apparent. As opposed to like skateboard tricks or dry tooling/ice climbing competitions, which also have depth but are impressive without any prior knowledge, imo.

For me personally, it's the fan aspect I don't get. What's the point of projecting the us vs. them mentality on some team, "we won", and foflowing a team almost religiously, even building ones own identity around it, at least in part. In general, getting so emotionally invested in it, i don't understand. And it seems to mostly be a team sport thing.

But in this case they don't really have a moat, any invention is copied or surpassed by the competition within weeks/a few months, and there's no monopoly in sight. And they're all running negative revenue following the same scheme, high chance that if some start failing, it will scare investors, which in turn makes the negative revenue thing harder to do for the ones still in business

Assuming google doesn't start blocking it to please the dictator, of course.

"Seeing like a state". It could be half the length without losing anything, but it's a very interesting perspective on states and central planning that I haven't thought about before and am enjoying.

that could be, or maybe I got lucky. In any case, I'm not complaining. i remember it was like 750 bucks for both machines, and with other brands it would have been 800-1200 for a single machine

Our super cheap Candy (Washer and a drier) has been going for 5 years now without issue 🤷 Though i'd buy a different brand if i had to again and wasn't pressed for money, I am definitely surprised how well it's doing.

The solution proposed in "After Capitalism" is (with democratically worker managed companies):

A flat-rate tax on the capital assets of all productive enterprises is collected by the central government, all of which is plowed back into the economy, assisting those firms needing funds for purposes of productive investment. These funds are dispersed throughout society, first to regions and communities on a per capita basis, then to public banks in accordance with past performance, then to those firms with profitable project proposals. Profitable projects that promise increased employment and/or further other democratically decided goals are favored over those that do not. At each level—national, regional, and local—legislatures decide what portion of the investment fund coming to them is to be set aside for public capital expenditures, then send down the remainder, no strings attached, to the next lower level. Associated with most banks are entrepreneurial divisions, which promote firm expansion and new firm creation. Large enterprises that operate regionally or nationally might need access to additional capital, in which case it would be appropriate for the network of local investment banks to be supplemented by regional and national investment banks.

That's for taking care of the investment part that stocks/shares fulfill for a large part right now.

And for getting there:

Legislation giving workers the right to buy their company if they so choose. If workers so desire, a referendum is held to determine if the majority of workers want to democratize the company. If the referendum succeeds, a labor trust is formed, its directors selected democratically by the work-force, which, using funds derived from payroll deductions, purchase shares of the company on the stock market. In due time, the labor trust will come to own the majority of shares, at which time it takes full control via a leveraged buyout, that is, by borrowing the money to buy up the remaining shares.

Along with legislation that if a company is bailed out by the government, it gets nationalized and turned into a worker self managed company. If companies get sold, they can only be sold to the state (according to the value of current assets, not stock market cap or similar). And if a firm is not sold, it's turned over to the workers if the founders death. If there's multiple founders, each can sell their share to the state or workers separately.

For stocks specifically, there's the Meidner plan, where every company with more than 50 employees is required to issue new shares each year equivalent to 20% of its profits, these shares will be held in a trust owned by the government, and in an estimated 35 years, most firms would become nationalized (of course along side all newly founded firms having to be worker owned).

Not saying I fully agree with all of Schweickharts proposals, but at least the book is a relatively concrete proposal for an alternative that can be discussed, and how to possibly get there, so I thought it merits sharing.

One thing I always wonder is if it actually could end poverty 22 times over.

i mean, rich people hoarding money is increasing moneys scarcity for everyone else, theoretically increasing its value. And if it were suddenly distibuted fairly, it'd lose value and there would be a higher cut off for what's considered poverty. on the other hand, a lot of their money is funny money, like being tied up in stocks and not actually worth as much in currency compared to what is said (if they sold the stock, the value would drop and they'd get less).

so i'm actually curious if anyone ever did an analysis of what would happen if e.g. the wealth of the top 0.1% is evenly spread across the population.

of course that's super complex and hard to say what the social effects would be. But the simplistic 'everyone would get x dollars, poverty limit is y, x > y, so no more poverty', while useful to show the scale, always sounded too naive to me.

Plus kids will find a way. Our english teacher didn't want us to say 'shit', but to use 'sugar' instead.

There was a lot of 'bullsugar' and similar in that class.