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No, I actually do want some of these. I think housing should be a right, not a privilege. Basic universal income is going to be very important when suddenly AI takes half of our blue-collar jobs bcz rich assholes think they can get by without workers. And actually, I do want corporations to be unprofitable. They're currently profiting off the backs of their employees labor, and i think that should belong to the employees.
I don’t disagree, and everything should be clean energy etc. but, y’know. First things first. Save Democracy, Constitutional right of women to their own bodies, tax billionaires, and such. We’ll meet back here afterwards for next steps
I'm not opposed to corporations being profitable. I just want those corporations to be worker-owned
P e r f e c t
I don't expect elections to deliver the result I want, I want my vote to count
Although a lot of the other points deserve (more?) attention, I just want to share this because I never thought how hard this would feel.
I'm in my early 30s and come from a very apolitical family. About 1.5 months ago I voted for the first time in my life. At an embassy in the fraudulent Russian election.
Of course I knew my vote would not count. I always knew that every Russian election since I was a kid was a fraud. I did it for a statement and to partake in an event that resembled a demonstration, to do the limited thing I can do. But I would have never imagined that feeling that would hit me once I had actually voted.
After standing in line and passing the security checkpoints and ruining the bulletin (which in theory should count as a vote against everyone in the percentages). Once it was done. I was... furious, enraged, desperate. Much more than I thought. On a rational level I knew my vote didn't matter. The results were already calculated no matter what. Even before I got in line. No matter whether I had smuggled in my non erasable pen or not. But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn't want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
So, yes, this freaking matters. I hope none of you will ever feel this way after voting. And for the love of God, if you have a passport of a country who has somewhat fair elections, please go vote.
I want more than this. I want a single person in LA's vote to count as much as a single person in Oklahoma. Right now, they don't; because of the electoral college, people in densely populated states' votes count for less in the general election than those in the bible belt.
I think your comment distracts from the point of theirs, but we're already here, so: the bigger issue is single seat representation and "choose one" voting. Single seat means that no matter who wins, a large fraction of the population won't have representation. Who do you go to if you're a Democrat but the Republican won? Choose one voting means the voters can't support everyone they like. There are lots of ways to fix these problems, but I like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting with 5 winners per district. It's impossible to submit an invalid ballot, and the voting technique can be easily applied to single seat positions like mayor. With 5 members per district, plus the decay property of the counting method, trying to gerrymander the map is functionally impossible and it's highly likely any given voter will have someone in office who is willing to listen.
Thanks man. There's too many people on this site telling one not to vote because of cocked up ideas of what america is and isn't. It may be a flawed democracy, but at least it's a democracy. I hope you live to see your vote count someday too
Thank you for writing this, I'm glad to read it
Your country will get better with more people like you, I hope it happens in your life time.
Thank you. I also hope it will. It surely will.
But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn’t want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
I feel the same way after voting in Texas. Different method for caging and disenfranchising voters, but the outcomes are functionally the same.
I don't think presuming my vote will be traunched and kettled and rendered meaningless through statistical manipulation feels any better simply because I know it will be counted. Its still a rigged game. The outcomes are overwhelmingly predetermined.
What I want more than anything is for my city of Houston to go its own way. To be independent of the corrupt cesspool of bigotry and fear that dominates the capital building. I don't want to simply be counted in the minority. I want my independence.
Number 1 is hitting super fucking hard currently, not just with healthcare but science. I'm so fucking angry to see year after year after year NASA gets a budget cut and the fucking military gets yet another massive increase...
It's to the point now that NASA had to decide what currently running missions to cancel not just what future missions are now unfeasible... Chandra X-ray telescope is the only one we have and the entire global X-ray science community relies on it... We're now forced to give it the axe so we can shovel more money at Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin....
My entire life this is all I've ever seen. More military, less science. More military, no healthcare.
and nobody fucking wants it but the billionaires! its great.
direct action or nothing.
Even 30% for housing is pushing it and based on lending limits instead of quality of life. Somewhere between 20-25% would be more reasonable.
It's based on budgeting theory, that you should avoid rent/mortgage payments taking up more than 30% of your income.
Granted these budget theorists also state you should be putting 10/15% to investments, which may be true theoretically, but is not in any way practical for many misfortuned folks.
Just to be clear. I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees, and a small portion of unionized companies with private ownership and self employed folks to fill in the gaps here and there with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees
So you don't want a Soviet Union. You just want a... an elected local, district, or national council of workers to control the economy... but, like, a bunch of them in a kind of amalgamated political body?
with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
Damn. Nobody tell this guy about Lenin's NEP.
Yes, I want what the Soviet Union claimed they wanted not what they got. You know, like any syndicalist worth her salt.
I’m not claiming that communism is bad, I’m saying that over centralization in the hands of a single party has done more harm to communism than MLs would like to believe.
i actually do want corporations to be unprofitable. profit is theft, not viability.
not really. a small profit accounts for the risk and work involved in obtaining it. Problem is to often its way outsized and if not the secondary objective is massive loss for the public sector to shoulder.
Profit isn't a bad thing if the employees are the shareholders.
yes. arguably if profit is actually paid out to employees it’s no longer profit as it’s reinvestment into the laborers and thereby becomes a cost. but yes, that’s just semantics and i agree :)
Eh, I think corporations should be banned. Make everything individual and worker co-ops. These huge businesses and huge governments do more damage than good.
also, as an actual radical:
yeah pretty spot on with healthcare. this is basic 'having a society' shit.
I don't want a job that pays so much as an actual society I can contribute to and nurture and be a fucking part of that will take care of me some noticeable fraction of how I take care of it. I'd rather not have money involved, if its all the same to you.
I do actually want a free place to live. I'll help build it or whatever, but I'm fucking done compromising with landlord parasites; watched too many of their victims die.
I do not want corporations to be unprofitable; I want them dismantled and their boards executed. worker co-ops are cool. individual enterprise is cool. no more exploitation, no more not having a voice.
I think the entire concept we have of 'democracy' is absolutely cucked. I could write some essays on what real democracy looks like, but the short version is: fuck your bourgoise elections.
kill the billionaires; tjwyre literal monsters who ~~drink children's blood~~ steal and transfuse the blood of the young to grasp vainly at eternal youth while burning our futures. no problem with your party yacht if its green and you built it with your friends, but I think we need a reset on 'wealth'.
Glad I was not the only one who was reading these points and questioning why the fuck wouldn't I be fighting for free healthcare and housing. These aren't impossible goals.
I don't want my money for nothing; I want a job that pays for my basic needs
Nah fuck that. We live in a time where technology allows for universal material luxury and plenty of time off. If you're working, you deserve both to have your basic needs met and luxuries.
yeah. we've been creating more and more eficiences, or so every single tucking source has told me; through technology, economies of scale, and expertise. just like non fucking stop for the past 200 years.
so if we're working at least as much as people did 200 years ago, some heads need to fucking roll.
This is great - it’s high time we set the framing straight, just like this. For far too long public discourse has defaulted to conservative framing of issues, and it’s only served to drag the Overton window right. I agree with other commenters that things are more nuanced, but the least we can do is begin discussions from a more left-leaning frame of mind.
This all began almost a half-century ago, when conservatives began pouring billions of dollars into researching language and ideas. They wanted to ensure that they would forever dominate political discourse in the USA by making words mean what they wanted them to mean.
I want everyone to be given what they need to live comfortably so they don't get so fucking pissed off about the glaring unfairness of the world that they do a bunch of antisocial shit to cope.
I want everything that's written in black letters.
Sad that I no longer agree with this. I've become so radical. Socialism or barbarism. I won't be happy until every landlord is in prison.
I want the government to server the people. NOT the corporations and churches. Keep your religion to yourself and tax churches. (at least the bullshit big ones)
When it comes to tax exemptions for religion, I'm in favor of removing them all.
Religions should be treated as non-profits, if they don't want to pay taxes they need to file paperwork that shows the money is being used for expenses or charitable purposes, and there should be transparency to ensure that if they're doing shady shit like sending donated money to Italy or paying pastors millions or buying private jets, then at least that information is public.
It’s sad that if we actually got all of these, it would basically upend the entire broken system in America
Needs more jpeg
I don't support corporations making a lot of money. I don't support the ultra rich.
And you can't compromise on that. If the company or the person is too powerful, there is no good way to make them play fair.
well actually, counter point, i do want the elections to deliver the result i want, which is a functional system that represents its people fairly.
But wait, I actually do want those things.
Honestly. I do want many of the things in black.