251–260 of 372 posts
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Of course it is the logic of collective. In capitalism you decide how you'd want to spend your resources, on a farm or on a rocket. In collective it is collective who decides.
Capitalist farms - why are they farms and not rocket makers? Is capitalism holding them back?
I've studied and visited Mondragon before, and hosted their students at my company. It's very cool, but I'm unsure how replicable the model really is. My conclusion is that it emerged out of the unique environment of already high Basque solidarity, but even more so under Franco's oppression. After a few generations, they admit that the hardcore spirit is gone and made initiatives to try to restore it, but still some…
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I can’t speak to op’s emotional well being, but he is spot on with his reasoning. In the rarified air that most of us here inhabit, it’s easy to forget that for every college professor there is someone for whom tying their shoes is a significant cognitive challenge. For every really smart person, there is someone who lacks the cognition to participate meaningfully in society. For every brilliant individual, there is…
It's not so simple to measure intelligence, anyway. I marvel at some of the things a below-average person does every day such as drive a car at high speeds on the interstate, or navigating political bureaucracy. Meanwhile, I'm two standard deviations above the mean but have ADHD and sometimes struggle with basic tasks that even people of below-average intelligence have mastered.
The contrast is so much at times that I can see the confusion and concern in the faces of those around me whenever I have an ADHD moment. Yet, I'm an expert in multiple subjects, a quick learner and have a well-developed sense of intuition. People are multi-faceted, and we're not going to get very far with over-simplistic models of intelligence.
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Might be because since 2019 and the withdrawal of the US military presence in NE Syria, the relative prosperity of Rojava has plummeted. This draws into question exactly how 'autonomous' said autonomous zone was.
Yeah that's on of the things that get hand-wavity when you bring up these city-state type plans as well as anarcho-whatevers. They generally wouldn't be big enough to defend themselves from religious extremists or nation states acting against them--many of them not even figuring in defense against other entities and saying "we're pacifists". That kind of stuff only works when external factors like aggressive neighbor…
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In the OP: “Lorenzo estimates that the president of Mondragon is the highest-paid position (level 6) with a salary of around €200,000. Managers and directors earn between €80,000 and €120,000.”
So the president makes less than a middle manager in a Fortune 500 company. I hope there are some other benefits…
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Yeah that's on of the things that get hand-wavity when you bring up these city-state type plans as well as anarcho-whatevers. They generally wouldn't be big enough to defend themselves from religious extremists or nation states acting against them--many of them not even figuring in defense against other entities and saying "we're pacifists". That kind of stuff only works when external factors like aggressive neighbor…
I mean, if you're going to make that kind of political argument you can claim that Western Europe's postwar prosperity and relatively strong welfare states are a by-product of America footing the bill for defense (plus the seed investment of the Marshall Plan).
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Well actually socialism has been historically concerned with maximizing human creativity. Fourier’s utopian vision was “libidinal” work that aligns passions with labor. Marcuse has a similar view in Eros and Civilization. Chomsky views creativity as axiomatic for humans, and syndicalism the appropriate system for harnessing it.
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Didn't they make Sputnik
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It's located in Spain, a country not known for its vast wealth. Plus, it's in a special administrative region in Spain, the Basque Country. They enjoy subsidies and favorable treatment from the regional government.
> a country not known for its vast wealth Its looting of the gold and silver from S. America apparently didn't help.
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The problem with a system based on taking is that one runs out of things to take. Better to have a system based on creating things.
> The problem with a system based on taking is that one runs out of things to take. Pretty damning critique of capitalists there, comrade.
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Might be because since 2019 and the withdrawal of the US military presence in NE Syria, the relative prosperity of Rojava has plummeted. This draws into question exactly how 'autonomous' said autonomous zone was.
Yeah that's on of the things that get hand-wavity when you bring up these city-state type plans as well as anarcho-whatevers. They generally wouldn't be big enough to defend themselves from religious extremists or nation states acting against them--many of them not even figuring in defense against other entities and saying "we're pacifists". That kind of stuff only works when external factors like aggressive neighbor…