https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

Definitely true that application-specific design is often not worth the investment though. Chasing that 1000x improvement can easily cost you a year or two.

And we haven't had capitalism without rampant homelessness, corruption, systemic violence, exploitation of the global poor, and various other forms of avoidable misery. The status quo is bloody too, just not for people like me (and I assume like you).

> I do think we need a radical rethinking of the role of state in this in order to make it work though; ideally the state and worker collectives benefit from advantages that make it difficult for the capitalists to steamroll over them on the market, which over time leads to the weakening of capital

I want the same thing, but my understanding is that you can't get the state to align with workers against capital because capital will always outcompete workers at amassing resources simply through scale. One capitalist can extract surplus value from many many many workers at once, and use that value to buy more workers, to the ultimate end of buying the state through lobbying and funding campaigns.

Is there some way we don't end up back where we began?

So you get these well-meaning posts about how maybe life would be better if we could keep personal property and freedom and progress as a species, but lose the alienation from labour, coercive pressure, and basically everything else that literally defines capitalism and perpetuates what is bad about our system.

I had the same blind spot for most of my life, but at some point it dawned on me that everything I like about the current system is compatible with socialism, but the changes I would like to see are incompatible with capitalism.

I obviously agree that social programs are necessary for a just and humane society. But I also think the opposition from military-industrial complex, energy lobbies, and rent-seekers of all stripes make it impossible to implement these programs effectively. Because at the end of the day the root of the problem is capitalism.

When money is the name of the game in elections, the legislature, and even the justice system, how is it even theoretically possible to implement capitalism without the bad stuff? The best you can do is hope the capitalists are nice.

Would you have been okay with Russia going to Iraq's aid when the USA invaded the second time? You think it's fine if Russia not only fought American troops in Iraq, but bombed the USA as well? That would have been defense by your logic, since that's exactly what the USA did to Iraq in 1991.

Fascinating worldview indeed.

Also, in my field and in my region, $27k is massive funding. I don't know anybody who makes that much, let alone $44k, and we also don't get tuition or benefits covered. Our TA/RA union is currently striking because it's essentially impossible to live off of funding alone.

[1] https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-23-0...

Are you suggesting capitalism is not supposed to give control to the capitalist? Or that socialism is not supposed to give control to the workers? I thought my assessment was pretty uncontroversial. The point about which system yields "more" democracy is a pretty simple inference from there.

Or do you mean my last statement that democracy prevents corruption more than dictatorship? What do you propose we measure to verify or reject my hypothesis? No amount of data can prove it. But there's a pretty clear argument in favor of democracy: you can't stop corruption in a dictatorship if the dictator is corrupt; you can stop corruption in a democracy so long as the majority are not corrupt. A dictatorship can have close to 0 corruption or close to 100% corruption, it all depends on the dictator.

In a socialist utopia you have more democracy than in a capitalist utopia, because "true" socialism gives workers democratic control over their workplace, where as "true" capitalism gives full control of the workplace to the capitalist.

Indeed, democracy is better at preventing corruption than dictatorship.

Wanton military spending, bank bailouts, corporate tax cuts, etc. seem to be very common when money can buy legislators.

Aside from coordinating big groups to write tons of papers, he does a bunch of impressive wilderness exploration. I recommend checking out his website, there's some stunning photos:

https://people.inf.ethz.ch/bestam/expeditions.html

[1] The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben.

E.g., "We were in Vegas and saw an Elvis chapel, so we spontaneously decided to get married!"

They were in Vegas without any plans of marriage, saw a venue, and decided immediately to marry.

> Culture is what's uncontroversially and fearlessly blasted on front pages, and on mainstream TV.

My comments on dog-whistling were specifically targeted toward the one commenter talking about how politicians don't seem to care about white people.

If you want to go back to the broader discussion, on culture, then yes I agree. And what is blasted on front pages and mainstream TV is overwhelmingly white, with tiny pockets dedicated to other groups. To say that "whiteness" is a counterculture is absurd.

As an aside:

> the millions of white Democrats

The Democrat agenda also fits white people better than non-white people, though they make more effort than Republicans to acknowledge minorities.

As for why non-white Republicans vote that way, maybe they miss the dog-whistles, or maybe they think the racism of the party isn't directed at them (e.g., since they're "one of the good ones") or that it's outweighed by other factors (i.e., they hate taxes), or maybe they think the Republicans are the better of two evils. Not really relevant, since they aren't in this discussion. Do you have the critical thinking skills?