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  • IMO, guns are not the cause of violence. After WW2, Americans returning from war weren't shooting up schools, despite having easy access to firepower. It takes a broken mind to murder people without cause.

    My hypothesis is that society has been seriously corroded by capitalism, since it steals time and opportunity from people in many different ways. Parents not spending time with their children, appropriately sized homes for families being foreclosed, not being able to afford schooling, and so forth. All of these things are a poison that have built up over time.

    I am of the opinion that politicians focus on fighting guns, since those are the final defense against malicious governance. Without them, situations like Blair Mountain couldn't happen, where miners fought the corporations that raped their wives and daughters as a form of debt repayment.

    Behind the Bastards, the 2nd Civil War you never heard about

  • Cancer is what happens when cells no longer have a mechanism to keep them from unchecked multiplication. We all need cells, but only in a effective quantity. The same applies to the assorted parts that make up capitalism.

    I think that rejecting all of capitalism is a bad idea. Instead, the issues with capitalism and other systems should be identified, then have a designed arrangement to prevent those problems from developing.

  • I think the Universal Ranked Income concept that I outlined elsewhere in the thread would address this. I think most people would find generic goods to be very boring, thus they would be compelled to obtain money to buy something a bit more fancy. This would let us leverage the stuff capitalism is good at, namely the creation and distribution of products. So long as capitalism is never allowed to dictate a person's wellbeing, I think it can be used to optimize society's expenditure on resources.

  • Thing is, you can democratize even the free stuff. For example, in order to sell luxury models of dishwasher on the market, a company has to offer a basic free model. People from there can select one of the free models on offer from however many companies, or opt to spend money to get something with more features.

    In any case, an individual has to SPEND money to get education in a purely capitalist system. I think that getting money for luxuries from having good grades is much less authoritarian. A student can remain a student as long as they wish, in whatever field they are specializing in. Whereas, in our current capitalism, the vast majority of students are obligated to get a job, even while studying, otherwise they won't get to eat.

    Hard limits on work hours are principally a limit on workplace abuse. In Japan, you have to work overtime for free, else you are fired. While there are undoubtedly workaholics that an hour restriction would displease, I think most people would like to have free time to be human, not cogs. Also, workhour limitations means an employer has to hire a larger amount of workers, spreading out workloads more evenly. This actually improves productivity and resilience. For example, pregnancy leave won't harm the workplace as much, since there are extra people to pick up the slack.

  • I think the arena that a healthy capitalism excels at, is the creation and distribution of luxuries. Capitalism should solely be used for that aspect in a economic system, but society must provide all necessities by default. This would allow us to benefit from the good parts of capitalism, while preventing it from metastasizing into a cancer.

  • That is difficult for me. I am autistic, and more importantly, I was raised in a rural area without people. I am not exactly sure how socialization works, and certainly can't afford "third place" activities. Still, I might be able to manage it in a couple years. If America enters a civil war, I may be able to find a steady job and like-minded people to discuss this stuff with.

    In any case, you are very much correct that the concepts will need refinement and trial. I think if people were to experiment with economic models, a good place might be an EVE Online style MMO - several shards, each running on a different economic structure. After a year, those shards can be linked together into a single server, then we watch which economic faction has the most population the year after. That could be a relatively safe way to observe economics.

  • What parts are authoritarian? Aside from caps on excessive wealth and limitations on leadership, I don't see much limiting an individual's autonomy. As it is, most people are coerced into bad working conditions in order to live, which is a quite a shackle on personal liberty.

  • When it comes to ranking job classes, it should be based on developing ERK metrics: Effort, Risk, Knowledge. This obviously would require many researchers to verify certain things: how many hours can the average person work in a field before needing a break, how many years of education before the average person can do a job effectively, and the frequency of death or injury from the task, and so on.

    In any case, the income based on grades is for education - the idea being that students get paid for learning, and the more effective they are, the sooner they stop being students and enter the job market. The schools receive money for the grades students have, but have no part in the grading. It should be the state and federal government, through dedicated teams, that students are graded on tasks. Through the internet, it would be easy to transfer, archive, and grade copies of student work to these graders. This allows teachers to focus on teaching.

    As to "If I do better than my peers, I want to be recognized for that. Otherwise, why would I put in the effort?"...honestly, I want this mindset to go the way of the Dodo. Your premise here is the very foundation of the rat race, because it creates excuses for individuals to be treated better than others in the workplace. If people do a job, it should be because they think it is neat, not so they could climb a social ladder.

    When it comes to something like sex work, it can be based on whether you worked that day. If you did a lot of customers or just one, you get paid the same. While a company can certainly fire slacking workers, they also run a risk of an issue: worker votes. Workers, both fired and currently on staff, should be able to vote for leadership positions and benefits within a company. If workers don't get enough clients, the company won't make enough money to pay workers - so they are incentivized to find fair bosses who can dole out enough clients among the workers.

    I would consider overtime and hazard pay to be the same issue. They can simply cause jobs to double in pay when in effect. Companies would try to avoid this when possible, so you would have the electric company trying to consistently maintain their infrastructure and services during regular hours. Night shifts can simply go to people who prefer them - after all, people have Rank 0 UBI. They are doing a job because they feel like doing so, and they will gravitate towards what feels most natural. Holidays are simply paid like any other day, regardless of whether anyone works.

    The survival needs are a non-sequitur. "3 meal kits" means "3 meals a day", of which people can obtain the types that suit their dietary needs. It just means that these kits are standardized. Hotdog #1 (regular) and Hotdog #6 (Halel), and so forth. The important thing here is that government offers a baseline quality and availability for food that anyone can obtain.

    As to labor shortages, that is a problem - but one not unique to UBI. The best solution in that case is to encourage students to enter the workforce, by offering a benefit to graduate from schooling. Which is why all jobs have at least double the income in a ranked system.

  • I think one way to implement UBI, would be what I call a "Universal Ranked Income". Everyone gets universal benefits - shelter, utilities, food, transport, gasoline, healthcare, all of this for free. However, the items and services are very generic. This is where capitalism steps in: money is used for buying luxuries, such as a fast car, physical books, a nicer home, fancy takeout, and so forth. Capitalism is terrific for catering to an individual's tastes, but is horrible at ensuring wellbeing. Thus, the separation of necessity from luxury.

    This permits people to strike or protest when they feel like it, since their survival isn't at stake. They also can wait for suitable job opportunities, which would do much to punish abusive corporations. The amount of income a person gets is based on their job rank, with students getting an amount based on their grades, while higher tier workers get fixed incomes each year, regardless of experience or location.

    Absolute floors and ceilings on wealth and income can also be implemented. That would prevent the accumulation of too much wealth by individuals and corporations. Corporations won't be able to control the wages of their employees, which would also prevent inflation - people can't be paid too much or too little for working, so pricing of goods will have be done according to what income bracket a seller wants to reach.

  • There IS reason for preinstallation, there are many people out there who lack the passion to research Linux, and would gravitate towards the familiar - Steam, in the case of gamers. The point is to make a switch away from Windows as unproblematic for as many people as possible. Also, Valve is developing a desktop version of Arch SteamOS.

  • Making an OS easy to use in everyday life is the key to mass adoption. If the EU wants to get away from Microsoft's garden, that means advertising valid options to people who aren't attuned to Linux.

    Money isn't the issue for SteamOS, it is awareness and making it available as an pre-installed option on consumer PCs. The EU could create standardized pamphlets about Fedora, Red Hat, and SteamOS, mandating stores to present that digestable information to consumers so that they know what flavor is best for their usecase.

  • I don't think it is social media. It is much more simple: people can't spend time with each other. Employers keep reducing the wages, while maintaining or increasing the amount of work their employees have to do. This means that workers can't invest time into friends or family, which in turn deprives children of healthy role models.

    Jackasses like Tate get to influence the children, because there is a void that has been left empty - Tate has enough wealth and time to fill in for society. Work culture is a ravenous beast, forever chasing workers. If you pause, you lose everything. So you might as well sacrifice the time you could spend with family, since you would lose them anyway if you shirk being a breadwinner.

    Optimization for the sake of line going up, inevitably destroys everything that surrounds the pillar that society is forced to worship.

  • Hopefully the French will also endorse Fedora, Red Hat, and Valve's SteamOS. Microsoft is a huge security issue, since it isn't clear whether MS would bend to DOGE's whims. The NLRB and other aspects of the US government had DOGE set up accounts, which were accessed within 15 minutes by Russia.

  • Far as I can tell, Neobanks are the best option for less well-off Americans. I personally would go for Wise since it allows for banking through a desktop browser, but Revolut and Neon might be better options if you use smartphones. Neon in particular, since that is part of the EU bloc, uses IBAN Internation Bank Account Number, and is based in Switzerland. Revolut and Wise are based in London.

    Mind, I haven't actually tried signing up for a neobank account as of yet. Do further research for any concerns you have, since I am pretty amateur at this fiscal stuff.

  • I don't think Kamela lost due to her gender. It is because she had no legitimacy since there was no primary to sort the chaff from the wheat, and she simply didn't have enough time to effectively campaign. Plus, bad advisors who wanted her to play by the standard Geronocrat playbook. Walz was carrying Kamela, until he was muzzled from pointing out how ghastly the Magat menace was.

  • Yeah. There was a time I merely thought the other side was misguided, but would see reason if we talk. That isn't how it works. Bullies only recognize power, and one should know when to speak their language.