But at what cost? The fiscal expense is impossible to calculate. One attempt by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, estimated that China spent over 1.7% of GDP on industrial policy in 2017-19, which would add up to over $3trn in today’s dollars if sustained for a decade. That money could have been spent on other things, such as health care, which might have better served the public
Or they could have funneled those trillions into the private pockets of a few billionaires.
But that performance required enormous inputs of capital.
Obviously. That's how the economy grows you buffoons.
The economy as a whole has fared badly on measures of “total-factor productivity” (TFP), which try to capture the growth in output that cannot be explained by increases in capital or labour.
I had a whole response typed out, but honestly, unless the article starts giving actual data and what the goals of the government were, any comment I make is just speculation.
Interestingly enough, I found a book that shows that TFP may almost be entirely a product how efficiently an economy processes energy resources. Although I doubt this is what the author of the article had in mind. Instead, they were probably thinking about some business magic racial supremacy number of something.
A different policy mix could have encouraged greater household spending, not capi
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But that performance required enormous inputs of capital.
Obviously. That's how the economy grows you buffoons.
The economy as a whole has fared badly on measures of “total-factor productivity” (TFP), which try to capture the growth in output that cannot be explained by increases in capital or labour.
I had a whole response typed out, but honestly, unless the article starts giving actual data and what the goals of the government were, any comment I make is just speculation.
Interestingly enough, I found a book that shows that TFP may almost be entirely a product how efficiently an economy processes energy resources. Although I doubt this is what the author of the article had in mind. Instead, they were probably thinking about some business magic racial supremacy number of something.
A different policy mix could have encouraged greater household spending, not capital spending, and flourishing services, not manufacturing muscle. These two shifts could have complemented each other nicely.
The existing policies of high capital spending and focus on manufacturing also complement each other. And have the benefit of picking up the whole world's slack from the de-industrialisation of America/Europe/Japan.
it is difficult to imagine the Communist Party under Mr Xi pursuing a different strategy. “They basically think that rich countries are those that make stuff and the richest countries are those that make the most advanced stuff,” says Gerard DiPippo of the RAND Corporation, a think-tank.
They keep talking about fiscal cost as though money is a resource. MONEY IS NOT A RESOURCE. It's an arbitrary medium of exchange. It's only useful to measure money cost if you can translate it to either A) natural resource consumption, B) labor, C) externalities you want minimized, D) deepening ensnarement in foreign debt, or E) an increase in money supply disrupting exchange.
If China didn't borrow internationally to make those investments, it didn't get deeper into debt to it's enemies.
If China isn't seeing inflation, it didn't flood the money supply.
No country has come even close to fully pricing its externalities and China uses democracy to manage those, so the fiscal cost doesn't represent that.
If China has better things to do with its labor, then this could represent missed opportunities to do those better things. However, as we've seen, China has ever improving living conditions, infrastructure, education, cost of living, etc. It would be difficult for someone to argue what specific things that labor should have been allocated to.
And natura
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They keep talking about fiscal cost as though money is a resource. MONEY IS NOT A RESOURCE. It's an arbitrary medium of exchange. It's only useful to measure money cost if you can translate it to either A) natural resource consumption, B) labor, C) externalities you want minimized, D) deepening ensnarement in foreign debt, or E) an increase in money supply disrupting exchange.
If China didn't borrow internationally to make those investments, it didn't get deeper into debt to it's enemies.
If China isn't seeing inflation, it didn't flood the money supply.
No country has come even close to fully pricing its externalities and China uses democracy to manage those, so the fiscal cost doesn't represent that.
If China has better things to do with its labor, then this could represent missed opportunities to do those better things. However, as we've seen, China has ever improving living conditions, infrastructure, education, cost of living, etc. It would be difficult for someone to argue what specific things that labor should have been allocated to.
And natural resource consumption is very much the same.
Writing an entire article about the 'fiscal cost' as though money is an actual resource with real use valuebis exactly the sort of brain rot to expect from the North Atlantic.
Well, in this case, they do have a valid point, in that the growth that China experienced was due to high amounts of capital investment rather than innovation per say. And as we know from the labor theory of value, high amounts of capital investment comes from a correspondingly high amount of the workforce being employed in producing the means of production (rather than consumption).
But to this point, there are 3 rebuttals
Xi has made it a point to shift from factor based growth to innovation based growth
An an underdeveloped country, China needs high growth in capital. The criticism about factor based growth only applies to fully developed countries. Lifting 800 million people out of poverty is proof that factor driven growth was the correct path for China to take
China only became such a massive exporter of goods because the advanced capitalist countries de-industrialised. At the same time, these regions maintained high consumption due to imperialism. Chinese industry is forced to pick up the slack of America/Europe.
Rapidity of growth is based on starting conditions, available labor, available natural resources, AND the available technological state.
When the starting conditions are making maximum use of available technology with the super majority of labor being employed towards the domestic economy, then the limiter to growth is the available technological state. Innovation in this case becomes the driver for growth as the delta between what is currently possible and what innovation makes possible is the domain of growth.
But then the starting conditions are not making maximum use of available technology, when the majority of labor is employed making an imperialist leech richer, and when natural resources are dominated by imperialists, then the delta between current state and potential state is predominantly in labor, natural resources, and building known technological capabilities. Innovations cannot even be taken advantage of under those starting conditions, let alone developed.
The idea that a peasant society should either innovate beyond the state of technology of the
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Rapidity of growth is based on starting conditions, available labor, available natural resources, AND the available technological state.
When the starting conditions are making maximum use of available technology with the super majority of labor being employed towards the domestic economy, then the limiter to growth is the available technological state. Innovation in this case becomes the driver for growth as the delta between what is currently possible and what innovation makes possible is the domain of growth.
But then the starting conditions are not making maximum use of available technology, when the majority of labor is employed making an imperialist leech richer, and when natural resources are dominated by imperialists, then the delta between current state and potential state is predominantly in labor, natural resources, and building known technological capabilities. Innovations cannot even be taken advantage of under those starting conditions, let alone developed.
The idea that a peasant society should either innovate beyond the state of technology of the imperialists or else should be tributary states is really just a position that everyone should be tributaries because innovation under imperialist dominance is not feasible as a means of growing an economy.
China's shift to innovation is therefore not a question of strategy but rather if material conditions and the shift to innovation will emerge only in so far as it is made possible and feasible by labor participation in domestic enrichment, natural resource sovereignty, and development of globally-known technologies that lack uncertainties.
China’s shift to innovation is therefore not a question of strategy but rather if material conditions and the shift to innovation will emerge only in so far as it is made possible and feasible by labor participation in domestic enrichment, natural resource sovereignty, and development of globally-known technologies that lack uncertainties.
This is exactly the case. China has developed to the point where it can seriously consider a change in priorities. Of course, the overall course is still to race towards prosperous socialism but with changing material conditions* come changing tactics.
*the big one being Chinese labor becoming more expensive and Chinese industry becoming highly automated.
China's number of births in 2024 increased by 520,000 compared to 2023, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Friday.
Of course the Chinese government is going to give Americans a warm welcome on their propaganda app. You're not going to see chinese people talking about Hong Kong, Uyghurs, Child labor. They could easily go to jail if they did any of that.
Go look up the video to find out how this ends, then go look up how it ended for people standing in front of cop cars during George Floyd protests for comparison. That's not the funny part though, the hilarious bit is that the guy was protesting the tanks leaving because he was against the color revolution you chuds were trying to run in China. Try harder shitlib.
A note of reflection on the June 4th Tiananmen protests written by three members of Qiao Collective whose families were closely involved in the June 4th Tiananmen protests.
At least 13 cities across China have implemented preferential housing policies, starting from May, to encourage families with two or three children to buy more homes.
These are actually interesting numbers. I do not doubt them and -0.99 pop growth per 1000 is "not great not terrible". Upon searching I stumbled upon a world bank statistic claiming that China has had a -0.1 growth rate in 2023 but I assume they are calculating per 100 and just rounded -0.99 / 1000 to -0.1 / 100.
Now there are some developed countries that did worse than China (ahem Germany, Poland, Japan - I leave Russia and Ukraine out of this since both are actively decimating their population) but there are also a lot of developed countries who did better: Australia with 2.4, Czechia with 1.8, Spain with 1.2, ...
Two numbers I also want to mention are the US with 0.5 and the EU as a whole with 0.2. So China is not far away from the West although both are still growing whilst China is still shrinking but the trend is your friend. It would interest me if migration has already been included (I'd say yes) because that usually benefits the growth rate of the US and EU (and is something both are actively fucking up as we speak thanks to conservative ultranationalists).
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These are actually interesting numbers. I do not doubt them and -0.99 pop growth per 1000 is "not great not terrible". Upon searching I stumbled upon a world bank statistic claiming that China has had a -0.1 growth rate in 2023 but I assume they are calculating per 100 and just rounded -0.99 / 1000 to -0.1 / 100.
Now there are some developed countries that did worse than China (ahem Germany, Poland, Japan - I leave Russia and Ukraine out of this since both are actively decimating their population) but there are also a lot of developed countries who did better: Australia with 2.4, Czechia with 1.8, Spain with 1.2, ...
Two numbers I also want to mention are the US with 0.5 and the EU as a whole with 0.2. So China is not far away from the West although both are still growing whilst China is still shrinking but the trend is your friend. It would interest me if migration has already been included (I'd say yes) because that usually benefits the growth rate of the US and EU (and is something both are actively fucking up as we speak thanks to conservative ultranationalists).
I don't see anything wrong with your numbers. China just started implementing the policies, and you wouldn't expect a huge change to happen in a single year. However, it does look like there is a measurable effect already.
China has problems just like any country, the workaholic culture is not as conductive towards having kids as some countries in Europe. The problem certainly doesn't appear to be worse than in most counties, and unlike a lot of countries the government is actually doing something about it. I still don't see why you point this as an issue that should make me dislike China.
My main reasons are they limit free speech/expression and they chose to centralize power instead of giving the power to the people, both in the government and in the workplace.
I'm a socialist myself, but a big part of the reason why I'm a socialist is I'm very anti-corruption. I believe that the centralization of power allows for corruption (and the passing of unjust laws) to occur, as we have seen in the USA and USSR especially, but also basically everywhere else on Earth throughout recorded human history.
The definition of socialism is defined as workers owning the means if production, which I interpret as workers also getting a say in how the means of production are handled. This idea is incompatible with centralizing power by the way I interpret the definition of socialism.
Basically, check out Richard Wolff, who is an economic historian and covers this topic very well.
Every society puts limit on freedom of speech and expression. There's nothing unique about China in this regard. What makes you think that the west got this balance fundamentally right while everyone else got it wrong aside from the anchoring bias you experience by virtue of growing up in a particular society? It's certainly clear that China's approach results in far more social stability than western approach.
Also, the fact that you think China centralizes power instead of giving it to the people shows that you don't actually understand how Chinese system works. I urge you to spend a bit of time educating yourself on a subject you're stating opinions on here. Here's a western article for you explaining that Chinese system actually encourages decentralized governance and grassroots organization. noemamag.com/what-the-west-mis…
Similarly, the government is also organized based on using grassroots structures as its foundation
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Every society puts limit on freedom of speech and expression. There's nothing unique about China in this regard. What makes you think that the west got this balance fundamentally right while everyone else got it wrong aside from the anchoring bias you experience by virtue of growing up in a particular society? It's certainly clear that China's approach results in far more social stability than western approach.
Also, the fact that you think China centralizes power instead of giving it to the people shows that you don't actually understand how Chinese system works. I urge you to spend a bit of time educating yourself on a subject you're stating opinions on here. Here's a western article for you explaining that Chinese system actually encourages decentralized governance and grassroots organization. noemamag.com/what-the-west-mis…
Similarly, the government is also organized based on using grassroots structures as its foundation news.cgtn.com/event/2021/who-r…
Meanwhile, corruption has little to do with centralization. Corruption comes from lack of means to hold people in authority to account. This problem exists within flat structures just as much as it does in centralized ones. In fact, it can be far more pronounced in cases where there are no formal methods for creating power structures jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.h…
Also, centralization is not at odds with workers owning means of production in any way. That's a really naive understanding of the problem. For example, you can have cooperative ownership of the industry where the workers are in control of how their workplaces operate, while having central governance structures that direct overall efforts to make sure they align with larger societal goals. These types of structures are necessary in large societies for the same reason complex organisms evolve things like nervous systems and brains. The brain doesn't micromanage the function of the body, but rather focuses on the high level goals beneficial to the organism as a whole.
I'm also well familiar with Wolff, and he has lots good ideas. If you actually pay attention to what he says then you'll see that he views Chinese system quite positively overall.
Often overlooked in portrayals of China, provincial & local officials have the greatest impact on day-to-day governance, & their actions shape national politics.
I also find it interesting how China is always judged against the Platonic ideal of human society. The reality is that no human society is perfect, there will always be problems, mistakes, and so on. The real question is whether a society is doing its best for the majority, and whether it's on a positive trajectory.
It’s little over five months since the Labour Party won the election. Yet a majority of the UK public are now opting for Keir Starmer to resign as prime minister, according to YouGov. 40% of respondents think he should resign, while 36% think he should remain and 24% don’t know.
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but sadly people wouldn't listen, they were (rightfully!) so desperate to get the tories out, they didn't want to hear that the establishment had arranged for them to be voting another one straight in.
And they also don't want to hear that this was entirely intentional, that it is a well established way of getting the blue tories back in and worse than ever next election, and that continuing to play this silly game of "vote for one of the two people we've approved for you to vote for" is ever going to benefit us as a society, but only the ones manipulating us in to keeping them in power.
And so the exact same cyclical shit will keep happening.
Starmer has done his job as lapdog for Israel. He got rid of Corbyn and made the 'leftist' party become right wing. Whether he gets re-elected matters little to him.
The hashtag “Your turn, dictator” has been widely shared on Egyptian social media in the past two weeks. Modeled after the 2011 rallying cry “your turn, doctor” used against then-Syrian President Bashar al Assad, the latest hashtag was coined by Ahmad al Mansour, an Egyptian national who recently served in the ranks of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) in Syria. Since HTS took control of Syria in December, Mansour has posted videos threatening Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el Sisi. “Listen, stupid,” Mansour routinely begins his videos.
On Tuesday, January 14, the X account for the “The 25 January Revolutionaries Movement” announced that Mansour and several of his associates were arrested and went missing after he was invited to meet with HTS officials, including Syrian Minster of Defense Murhaf Abu Qasra.
Ahmad al Mansour, an Egyptian national and former member of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) in Syria, has reportedly been detained in Syria after threatening Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el Sisi.
So far, Americans using RedNote have said they don't care if China has access to their data. Viral videos on TikTok in recent days have shown Americans jokingly saying they will miss their personal "Chinese spy," while others say they are purposefully giving RedNote access to their data in a show of protest against the wishes of the U.S. government.
"This also highlights the fact that people are thirsty for platforms that aren't controlled by the same few oligarchs," Quintin said. "People will happily jump to another platform even if it presents new, unknown risks."
With a Vanguard party made up of nearly 10% of the population... uh yeah, kinda. Not in a fully idealised sense, but certainly in enough of one that billionaires actually get prosecuted for their crimes.
I'm going to be honest, I do feel a little baffled but maybe that's because I didn't vibe with tik tok.
I think the pros are probably responsiveness and uptime (compared to fediverse things). Even now, hexbear goes down for one reason or another, to say nothing of back when we were the biggest lemmy instance (sorry Des, god that was a while ago), and setting up a new server is something that the vast majority of people don't want to do (especially compared to just signing up for an account). I think this is especially the case if you mostly consume video. While peertube (and others?) does exist, video is still pretty big per second of content, meaning that sort of continuous scroll video is a big ask for a small private server.
Compared to Facebook or Twitter or whatever, its unlikely that a Chinese spy is going to rat your weed ring out to American feds, unlike Facebook or Twitter (which routinely co-operate with American cops, no warrant).
Lastly, network effect, which is the big one. If the big creators you follow (idk what tiktok is like) go somewhere, you're
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I'm going to be honest, I do feel a little baffled but maybe that's because I didn't vibe with tik tok.
I think the pros are probably responsiveness and uptime (compared to fediverse things). Even now, hexbear goes down for one reason or another, to say nothing of back when we were the biggest lemmy instance (sorry Des, god that was a while ago), and setting up a new server is something that the vast majority of people don't want to do (especially compared to just signing up for an account). I think this is especially the case if you mostly consume video. While peertube (and others?) does exist, video is still pretty big per second of content, meaning that sort of continuous scroll video is a big ask for a small private server.
Compared to Facebook or Twitter or whatever, its unlikely that a Chinese spy is going to rat your weed ring out to American feds, unlike Facebook or Twitter (which routinely co-operate with American cops, no warrant).
Lastly, network effect, which is the big one. If the big creators you follow (idk what tiktok is like) go somewhere, you're going to follow them (well, not you, fellow lemmy person, but you know who I'm talking about). And your preference is that all your big creators go to the same place rather than to a dozen fediverse instances. Not that it would be insurmountable, but it would be a bigger ask.
Specific oligarchs may still be an effect (Zuck or Musk are not necessarily the most popular people).
Yeah tbh it's not quite ready for anyone who doesn't have the early adopter mindset, and is still a project showing off what features will come to the Fediverse rather than something to use now. e.g. a good fraction of the time it will show me Notifications to comments that I cannot even see in the web UI, that's quite frustrating:-(, and its search function is really quite horrible. Also notifications based on name mentioning (like @openstars@piefed.social) aren't implemented yet. And it was only literally yesterday that inline commenting was added to the flagship instance.
Then again, its Categories of Communities is superb, it has hashtags, YouTube embedding, shows you the "sidebar" area for every single post, and other functionality that Lemmy lacks. One I particularly like is the ability to trigger Notifications on or off for anything - following a user account, posts from a community, etc., or like turning them off if you no longer want to receive them for a particular comment. But most important of all: it is written in Python so development should go forward
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Yeah tbh it's not quite ready for anyone who doesn't have the early adopter mindset, and is still a project showing off what features will come to the Fediverse rather than something to use now. e.g. a good fraction of the time it will show me Notifications to comments that I cannot even see in the web UI, that's quite frustrating:-(, and its search function is really quite horrible. Also notifications based on name mentioning (like @openstars@piefed.social) aren't implemented yet. And it was only literally yesterday that inline commenting was added to the flagship instance.
Then again, its Categories of Communities is superb, it has hashtags, YouTube embedding, shows you the "sidebar" area for every single post, and other functionality that Lemmy lacks. One I particularly like is the ability to trigger Notifications on or off for anything - following a user account, posts from a community, etc., or like turning them off if you no longer want to receive them for a particular comment. But most important of all: it is written in Python so development should go forward much more quickly.
I use it as my daily driver, then switch to Lemmy also daily, especially if I ever need the search tool for anything, or for moderation that PieFed lacks a lot of ability for (though tbf Lemmy's cross-instance moderation abilities aren't the best either, unless 0.19.20 fixes that). I usually spend the largest majority of my time on PieFed, and have such great hopes for it in the future! Also, there is reportedly a fork of Thunder that can connect with it, so at some point such apps may not care whether someone is using PieFed or Lemmy.
Here is an example post showing off what it can do.
Why isnt there a federated tiktok clone, we have twitter, discord, and reddit, imo a tiktok/vine one has a higher chance of working, prob hella expensive tho
yes, the bug is a feature in some sense, but it's still also a bug 😅
Do you know how big Lemmy is compared to Mastodon? I actually know much less about Mastodon, I just never could use anything like Twitter, trying to fit my thoughts into so few characters was futile (and yeah, maybe that's a me problem, but still). Anyway, just completely speculating that if Lemmy is newer and smaller it might not have had the same opportunity to develop the same animosities and fractures, but at this point I'm literally making up fictions.
A semi-unified view is sorta what you get when instances are federated with one another, not that communities with the same name get unified but at least both communities' posts show up in one place. But the problem is even if you solve those problems, you still have instances that will defederate over differences in moderation policies and politics, etc. - ultimately a given set of instances will still always be a fractured subset of all the Lemmy instances. Maybe with enough people in a set of instances this wouldn't be a problem, but you have to find a way to get that many people to show up and stick around, and you have to keep those instances playing nice with one another and not falling apart like Mastodon instances did when a huge number of people migrated. People bring drama and overwhelm these smaller communities which are maintained by volunteers running servers and moderating. Ultimately what you see is that people just quit, and there is no stability - and then users leave and don't come back.
It's just not a model for gaining and retaining users, tbh.
sure, I can understand that concern, but I think there are plenty of users who might need better UI/UX for so many different reasons (thinking of disabilities like dyslexia, etc.) that have nothing to do with the quality of the content they would bring.
My point is that users bring content and activity, and that is why people ultimately want to join and stick around in an online community. Not every person who finds the Fediverse confusing is "not good enough" - I just hard disagree with you, there are plenty of good people with useful and entertaining things to contribute who would be more likely to if there weren't barriers. Regardless, this attitude is exactly what I think undermines the Fediverse, it's arrogant and alienating. Lemmy shouldn't be just for the technologically privileged, websites in general should be accessible to people of all kinds and perhaps online communities especially. What's the point of a community-built social media alternative if we reject most humans who would make up that community?
Sure, some people have every opportunity to research and learn about alternatives, but the number of those people are much fewer than the number of people busy raising kids, holding down jobs, etc. This idea that users are mostly idiots who are addicted to the algorithm is highly reductive, it actually adopts the cynical mindset of the capitalists trying to manipulate people (that users are just marks, idiots to be exploited, deserving of their exploitation). It's honestly surprising to see how much hatred people have for the average user here, considering to my mind Lemmy is meant to be a non-profit, community-driven alternative to corporate apps like Reddit. You would think that mindset would come with some understanding that the users are the victims and that blaming them misses the point. Lemmy is not a perfect alternative to Reddit, as I made my point above, so blaming the users feels a bit delusional to me, and honestly quite convenient to the desires of the oligarchs, which is to ignore social, economic, and otherwise stru
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Not everyone has the same situation.
Sure, some people have every opportunity to research and learn about alternatives, but the number of those people are much fewer than the number of people busy raising kids, holding down jobs, etc. This idea that users are mostly idiots who are addicted to the algorithm is highly reductive, it actually adopts the cynical mindset of the capitalists trying to manipulate people (that users are just marks, idiots to be exploited, deserving of their exploitation). It's honestly surprising to see how much hatred people have for the average user here, considering to my mind Lemmy is meant to be a non-profit, community-driven alternative to corporate apps like Reddit. You would think that mindset would come with some understanding that the users are the victims and that blaming them misses the point. Lemmy is not a perfect alternative to Reddit, as I made my point above, so blaming the users feels a bit delusional to me, and honestly quite convenient to the desires of the oligarchs, which is to ignore social, economic, and otherwise structural inequalities and manipulations and instead focus on the failings of individuals (in this case users) to not exceed their circumstances.
It doesn't ask where you are, just the language. As it's for Lemmy only, it obviously doesn't ask what service you are looking for too.
Join the Fediverse needs something much more like that but with the extra options. As it stands you have to do way too much scrolling, reading and clicking.
Read that to learn about how wealth is not able to be translated into political power in China like it is in capitalist controlled countries. @ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net wasn't talking out of their ass - you are just ignorant on this subject.
Having to post this Losurdo essay for the second time today because westerners can't help themselves but talk absolute nonsense about China anytime it comes up.
If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three social experiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distribution of poverty, suggests the “universal asceticism” and “rough egalitarianism” criticised by the Communist Manifesto…
If account migration is easy, that’s probably ideal. If you use something for a while and find yourself drawn to a specific server, and moving is easy once you’ve got a handle on the service, great. That could also help smaller communities who want to vet new members, allowing them to see post/comment history.
Maybe there should be a library of all the communities that have matching names and goals, so that an app can present them as one group with all the posts and comments merged as if it was just the one community.
The average user is confused by the idea that there are multiple instances of a single community, for example realizing that there is a /c/AskLemmy on multiple instances can be really confusing, especially for lay people who aren’t technically inclined.
Isn't the same on Reddit? How do people know what is the best community between /r/Games, /r/Gaming, ,/r/VideoGames, /r/TrueGaming?
It is known for instance than /r/Canada isn't as good as /r/OnGuardForThee , but that is something that people have to figure out too.
There is a community here dedicated to a specific influencer. Not going to give the name to avoid brigading, but they've been around for almost a year now, and are able to use the platform.
They came here when their subreddit got banned, and as Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit, they just were able to continue their discussions here. They acknowledge themselves that are aren't definitely the most technical users.
2 massive issues I have with pixelfed: No support for webp No support for hevc/heic
I don't use an iPhone but I do use heic for 10bit. As heic is default on iPhone, this means that iPhone users go through all the hassle to set up a pixelfed account but then can't upload anything.
Decision fatigue. It's a well known concept and can even be used in marketing as a standard manipulation tactic. If you have a job that has you making strategic decisions all day though, then you'll get decision fatigue. Then the last thing you want to do is mull over a bunch of server details to make the right choice 🤷♀️
Then don't. Just pick one at random. Use it for a bit. If you don't like it try another. That's what I did with Lemmy, Linux, fuck even the menu at this Mexican restaurant near me.
Try something, see if you like it. Pick something else if not. It's that simple
For a lot of people it's not that simple. Once burnt out on decisions, they just don't make one. Picking one at random is still a decision and one that requires at least an ounce of what picking a server even means here. It sucks but it's the truth
Nah, fuck the Chinese GOVERNMENT. You don't have to be bigoted towards the people of a country to disapprove of what their authoritarian government does.
Personally, I have nothing against the people of China, Iran, or the US (to name a few obvious examples of peoples under the boot of an unrepresentative government), but that doesn't mean that I approve the oppression and other abuses their governments keep committing towards their own people and others.
You could have a short questionnaire that works as whittles things down based on interests or other parameters (eg. How strict you want the moderation to be or whatever). That could also be used to suggest some optional first follows.
Lol. I'm not actually surprised at all that the country that just elected Junior Hitler again is literally begging to be fucked by the CCP. You REALLY cannot fix stupid and stupid is now the vast majority.
Only a small minority of the tiktok users live in the swing states that mattered. Besides, both parties pushed for this ban, and now Trump is actually going to try and stop the shutdown so he can look like a hero.
It's like Democrats are allergic to doing anything that's popular.
Oh yes, it's because we who are carrying out a genocide are so much more civilized than them, I see. China just isn't civilized enough, you say? And what skull measurement would you posit is responsible for that, Professor?
... and when it asks what language, it doesn't differentiate between English and American Englishes, for example, and you have to scroll down quite a long way to get shown Feddit.uk.
Sometimes you just want to know everyone's on the same page when you talk about biscuits, pants and fannies.
There's a lag in getting emails atm because the infrastructure is shared with pixelfed, which is blowing up right now and the emails are getting rate limited
It's super funny that so many zoomers have just moved to another (more) Chinese app. So obviously the reporting has been about that, and not the fediverse. But I also don't understand why people have a need for these apps to get big. A small community of people who I kind of know a little bit is a way better experience.
I think that's already too complicated. And the part about the server location is irrelevant as the person doing the invite should already know where the person they are inviting is located. It should be just a "Welcome to Lemmy, click below to register and afterwards you are shown a QR code to link a mobile app like [insert recommended option] if you want".
Might be easier for a particular subreddit to move (the same thing happened with /r/196 when they got banned, they moved to Lemmy), and in that case I don't think the problems I described matter as much because the social activity is already centralized to that one community. But that's a rather niche situation, most users are not dedicated to a single subreddit or community and they want to consume content from a variety of places.
Yes, and I think Reddit has struggled to gain the same number of users as other social media platforms - their UI is more challenging for a lot of people, and the experience of trying to find communities can be frustrating and confusing. It's a good point, but I still found it fairly easy to find the main subreddit for a given community based on the activity going on. My point about fractured instances is that you don't have something like two /c/Gaming communities that don't overlap in users at all due to defederation. On Reddit a user is on a single instance with all the communities in one place. On Lemmy you have to find not just the community but also the instance that community is on (or an instance that federates with the instance the community is on). All of these extra steps are even more complicated, and remember Reddit's interface was already confusing for lots of people.
I think my mom would find IRC and usenet very difficult to get into using, for example. Being old doesn't mean it's accessible or understandable to people. Even worse, the young people (like "Gen Z", as much as I hate to use generational thinking) seem to be less tech-literate than Gen Y, so lots of the relevant user base are not going to navigate these things even if they seem simple to a lot of us. Just the curse of expertise I guess (where you forget what it was like before you knew things, how intimidating it all was, etc.).
My point was more than as bad as the Lemmy UI is said to be, it's still close enough to Reddit so that non technical users can just move here and not be lost
I still found it fairly easy to find the main subreddit for a given community based on the activity going on.
It is the same here. A community that would be on a defederated instance (like Beehaw's community) are always less active than communities on generally federated instances like LW, Lemm.ee or SJW
Sure, but depending on how fractures are created in the future, navigating which instances are federated together and where to be is itself complicated. I don't think even the idea of "instances" is something most users are going to easily grok. It sets us up to have trouble receiving and retaining users.
I pretty much agree with the UI itself being fairly close to Reddit, and I think a Reddit user wouldn't find it too complicated to move here and be able to comment and post. My critique isn't as much that aspect of Lemmy's UI (which I think is impressive and pretty great), but more about the way federation can be confusing and thus alienating to users. The user experience (UX) overall is much worse in the Fediverse for lay users who are expecting this to be a typical centralized social media site.
Thank you, that is a huge difference in terms of size. Still not sure my speculation is useful even with that fact, but I do think size and scale will influence how complicated and fractured instances will be.
Blaze answered with the stats, but I'll add some interpretation. Mastodon's biggest problem is lack of feature parity (it seems to me, who has literally never used it, or X even when it was Twitter, so take this one with a huge grain of salt), but Lemmy's problem is different, relating more to lack of content. Which in turn relates to lack of moderation tools across instances and willingness and ability to block trolls.
It's not just that Lemmy is newer and smaller, it's that it works differently than Mastodon: here we have "thoughts", like Star Trek or Star Wars or LOTR or using Linux btw, and so we go to where we can enjoy those thoughts. Or rather, we go to different rooms where we can enjoy discussing those thoughts. In those rooms, when we get barraged by extremist content e.g. from the Alt-Right, the Alt-Left, or just Alt-Alt, then we leave that room, and have little desire to ever return - after all, why would we? (How much fecal matter is okay to be in your soup?) This makes the same content that is here less worthwhile for us to want to consume, fo
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Blaze answered with the stats, but I'll add some interpretation. Mastodon's biggest problem is lack of feature parity (it seems to me, who has literally never used it, or X even when it was Twitter, so take this one with a huge grain of salt), but Lemmy's problem is different, relating more to lack of content. Which in turn relates to lack of moderation tools across instances and willingness and ability to block trolls.
It's not just that Lemmy is newer and smaller, it's that it works differently than Mastodon: here we have "thoughts", like Star Trek or Star Wars or LOTR or using Linux btw, and so we go to where we can enjoy those thoughts. Or rather, we go to different rooms where we can enjoy discussing those thoughts. In those rooms, when we get barraged by extremist content e.g. from the Alt-Right, the Alt-Left, or just Alt-Alt, then we leave that room, and have little desire to ever return - after all, why would we? (How much fecal matter is okay to be in your soup?) This makes the same content that is here less worthwhile for us to want to consume, for the same reason that Musk's constant Xcrements taint people's experiences on that platform. The rest of the content is fine - but why put up with the bad along with the good when you don't have to receive either, and you can instead just text individual people that you know irl, read a book, watch TV, touch grass, and basically enjoy life without having to ever walk back into that Nazi bar again?
So taking a stab at it: Mastodon is too fragmented, while Lemmy is perhaps the exact opposite? At least, I almost walked away from Lemmy entirely as a result of this effect (in fact I somewhat did - I am talking to you from not from Lemmy but from a newer alternative to it called PieFed, although tbh it's not fully ready for mass distribution yet, but it's coming along so exceedingly nicely!, and Blaze and so very many others of us here have mentioned similar thoughts in needing to block much of the existing content here in this Nazi bar space. Which leaves even less content for us to consume, as well as somewhat reduced desires to contribute as well, knowing what kind of backlash in the comment section usually results whenever we do (is 100 positive upvotes worth one negative comment? what about 200 upvotes but the comment is REALLY bad? there is a line somewhere, but TLDR: toxicity discourages discussions).
And the above thought helps explain why echo chambers exist: as an evolutionary feature - survival of the social media platforms that have it - they work, up to a point (after which they fall apart, most especially upon touching real life).
Does this perspective help? TLDR: I want 100% of all the diversity of opinions, so long as they are offered in good faith, but I can brook zero of the bad-faith crap, and too much of the latter just causes most people to nope out, rather than find a way to stay and cope.
The user experience (UX) overall is much worse in the Fediverse for lay users who are expecting this to be a typical centralized social media site.
They can ignore the federation aspect and still use the site. You see quite a few people here not even knowing what their instance is. For them Lemmy is just their Lemmy mobile app and that's it
Maybe people want a platform that’s more than just a constant Linux and capitalism-bad circlejerk sprinkled with some basic news and askreddit-type threads.
I do wish these appeared more on the front page though. Subscribing and curating my feed should be reserved for niche content IMO, not general communities like movies and art. Sadly the fediverse seems to lack real niche content too. Meanwhile TikTok (and similar sites) have an algorithm that feeds you interesting content you wouldn’t even think to look for. And both TikTok and RedNote have a large existing user base to provide all sorts of content.
We're right here and we suck, mate. FOSS almost always sucks.
Besides, many Lemmy users have been very clear that they do not want the fediverse to have more reach. We don't try to appeal to TikTok users. We don't want to make space for them.
Yeah sorry but no. Lemmy sucks and the fediverse is an overly complicated mess of in groups, our groups, federated and non federated communities and people will be racist to you and and you can also end up indoctrinated just as much by picking the wrong community starting point.
Wondering why people aren't here doesn't take a big mystery and despite all the people in here with blinders for all kinds of topics I'm not shocked that anyone looking in would be disgusted, compare this place to 4chan with user names and move on.
this is what the open source community refuses to understand. If you want to go mainstream, you need to give users less choice. There is one windows, there is one macos, but one struggles to describe just what a linux distro even is.
Yeah, that's a bugbear of mine, and one of the reasons I think this place is necessary - people do seem to default to English-language = America. I think quite a few people aew surprised to find lemmy.world is hosted in Europe and subject to their laws.
It's why @Blaze@feddit.org has been looking into promoting American content on American instances.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
I believe that this is a design issue. Instances are designed so that they function like categories. That categories then have subcategories.
The issue is that with user distribution, you can't then just assign users round robin distribute the load. This leads to what we now have which is very confusing to the end user.
Users was a centralized experience. The duplication of communities is a prime example of the bad design.
In the abstract, I would consider putting all instances in a pool. Each instance runs a different community, with servers also duplicating x number of communities for the sake of redundancy (instance goes offline, content still exists on another server). It's complicated, and has it's own issues/flaws, but I believe that from a high level view, it is a better design in general.
The current system is just a mess unfortunately.
Perhaps there could be a hybrid of these two approaches that would be superior.
My back of the napkin design prioritizes user experience and ease of use. That said, I can immediately think of a few downsides.
Each instance runs a different community, with servers also duplicating x number of communities for the sake of redundancy (instance goes offline, content still exists on another server). It’s complicated, and has it’s own issues/flaws, but I believe that from a high level view, it is a better design in general.
How are policies/moderation decisions discussed between the instances? That's why you have different versions of the same instance, because !politics@lemmy.world and !politics@lemmy.ml are going to be quite different
No more instance based communities. Instead instances are assigned to groups of servers for redundancy and you end up with a more centralized experience.
Right now the user's identity and the content they consume & interact with are too intertwined in many cases.
There are two aspects here:
1. The user's home base, which is basically which server or app they log into. 2. The communities they belong to, which can be on any server anywhere on the fediverse.
We have to get out of the mindset that the server you sign up on is your community, because with federation, you are not limited to the server you sign up on.
This feels like kicking the can down the road just to trip on it later, but I respect your effort and dedication, so do what you think is best, I wish you luck.
The European Commission has asked X to hand over internal documents about its algorithms, as it steps up its investigation into whether Elon Musk’s social media platform has breached EU rules on content moderation.
The EU’s executive branch told the company it wanted to see internal documentation about its “recommender system”, which makes content suggestions to users, and any recent changes made to it, by 15 February.
X has been under investigation since December 2023 under the EU’s content law – known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) – over how it tackles the spread of illegal content and information manipulation. The company has been accused of manipulating the platform’s systems to give far-right posts and politicians greater visibility over other political groups.
It's pretty dead, a lot of pods has closed down last year and it continues to shrink, they could maybe reverse the process by supporting ActivityPub or other additional protocol, but they have refused, and diaspora* protocol hasn't gained any additional traction, sooo..
So the only chance of Diaspora to survive is for Friendica to grow. Just like it happened with Mastodon back in the day, and I could see anything I wanted.
Around December 29th, multiple big diaspora* pods shut down. According to one source, diaspora* lost over half of its users within three days. On January 25th, diasp.org, one of the biggest pods, will meet its end.
Also, if anything, Friendica (plus Hubzilla plus Socialhome) will suck the rest of life out of diaspora*. diaspora* users will move there from their own dying pods to stay in contact both with their friends who still hold out on diaspora* and with their friends who have moved on to something that uses ActivityPub. And the former will become fewer and fewer as more and more pods shut down.
Ironically, Google+ was an all-out diaspora* ripoff. And Google got away with it because they brazenly stole from something that nobody even knew existed.
Remember Google's new UI style? The black bar at the top? Stolen from diaspora* for Google+.
Also, everyone claims that Google+ invented the concept of "circles". Actually, Google just ripped off diaspora's aspects. (And Friendica had them several months before diaspora even. So Friendica had them first. Not diaspora*. And Google even less.)
Yep I was a very early developer (software developer) on the platform back in the day. Facebook and Google both stole a lot of what diaspora did with communities/circles and UI. I have not been on it for a very long time. I should take another look.
I apologize for my ignorance but i did try to figure it out and read... but can i interact with lemmy on friendica and vice versa? i see mastodon should work...but not understanding i guess
Yes, Friendica should work with pretty much everything on the Fediverse and beyond (Bluesky, Diaspora, Tumblr and anything that spits out an RSS feed). It handles communities a lot better than micro-blogging services.
As much as Facebook sucks these things will never replace it.
Just clicking through them, it's apparent it suffers from the same problem lemmy has. You have to read things and follow instructions and then choose an instance....
Yeah, you lost everyone at the first step of having to follow instructions. People just want a Sign Up button, and that's it. That's the only step they're willing to go through.
If, after clicking Sign up, they then have to figure out which instance (whatever that is) they have to choose, they'll just quit right there.
Such projects desperately need some professional UX/UI people involved. They always feel like they're designed by back-end devs.
I also can't imagine there being any difference to the instances as the concept of "local" doesn't really make sense like it does with Lemmy. Maybe they should obfuscate the instance selection and the sign up process just puts you onto a random instance or one that's best suited by geographical location.
This is even fairly easy for (streams) which is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator, eleven years after Friendica. And I wouldn't even feel bad about it.
That's because (streams) has only got two public, open-registration instances. If you're in North America, it's Rumbly. If you're in Europe, it's Nomád (with a German veteran admin who also runs two Hubzilla hubs, who is savvy enough to single-handedly re-write Hubzilla's entire help system from scratch in both German and English, and who plans to do the same for (streams)).
And it's because (streams) intentionally
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This is even fairly easy for (streams) which is a fork of a fork of three forks of a fork (of a fork?) of a fork of Friendica by Friendica's own creator, eleven years after Friendica. And I wouldn't even feel bad about it.
That's because (streams) has only got two public, open-registration instances. If you're in North America, it's Rumbly. If you're in Europe, it's Nomád (with a German veteran admin who also runs two Hubzilla hubs, who is savvy enough to single-handedly re-write Hubzilla's entire help system from scratch in both German and English, and who plans to do the same for (streams)).
And it's because (streams) intentionally keeps itself away from instance-listing websites like Fediverse Observer and FediDB, so being railroaded to any one specific instance is just about the only chance you have to get into (streams).
Granted, it has a learning curve that's even steeper than Friendica's. It doesn't have a UI/UX that looks like $10M of VC. And there's no way whatsoever to use (streams) with any kind of dedicated, native mobile Fediverse app, especially not its own official iPhone app named "Streams" that looks like $20M of VC.
Gotta love ELSTER, my favorite social media platform.
::: spoiler Context ELSTER, short for ELektronische STeuerERklärung (electronic tax return), is the official German software/web page for creating and submitting your tax return. It has the same logo as Diaspora.
I doubt so. The association between magpies and theft is fairly strong in German:
(diebisch = thieving)
Source: DWDS (digital dictionary of the German language - publicly financed)
A logDice of 10.1 is extremely high by the way. For example, "war" has a score of 10.8 with "cold", an 8.1 with "peace" and a 7.3 with "against terror".
A fungus sits at the intersection of the social web (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, etc.), the semantic web (knowledgraphs like Wikidata.org) and decentralized federated learning.
This means it represents the "computation web"-aspect in the above picture. Together with other similar agents, it result in a decentralized, federated web of AI agents that work on open, shared data and are open to communities. Everybody should be able to set up their own fungus service and help to grow an AI model of their choice. I call this the "fungiverse" or "mycelial web".
A fungus web-service ... - answers user requests over the social web - users are also able to insert knowledge via posting to a hashtag the fungus listens on - writes and reads data from the semantic web to collaborate with other fungi agents (this would ideally done with decentralized technology like solid pods
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A fungus sits at the intersection of the social web (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy, etc.), the semantic web (knowledgraphs like Wikidata.org) and decentralized federated learning.
This means it represents the "computation web"-aspect in the above picture. Together with other similar agents, it result in a decentralized, federated web of AI agents that work on open, shared data and are open to communities. Everybody should be able to set up their own fungus service and help to grow an AI model of their choice. I call this the "fungiverse" or "mycelial web".
A fungus web-service ... - answers user requests over the social web - users are also able to insert knowledge via posting to a hashtag the fungus listens on - writes and reads data from the semantic web to collaborate with other fungi agents (this would ideally done with decentralized technology like solid pods, or other knowledge graphs, e.g. like wikidata.org or an own fuseki server) - develops a shared AI model (which is also written to the semantic web) based on decentralized federated learning (which would be ideally be based on something like FlowerAi, but isn't at the moment).
The three parts can be thought of as a social network, a chat bot network and a knowledge graph (like a wiki for data), with all of the three aspects interlinked - the fungus drawing its data from the knowledge graph and being available in the social web as a bot, the social network to give access to the knowledge base and AI bots through bots, and the knowledge base, which can be viewed as a wiki with the bots that currently work on it and the comments from the social network. From a users perspective, the fungus appears as a chat bot interface (with the ability to view all bots its connected to and to which they are connected to etc.), the knowledge base would appear as a wiki like wikidata.org and the social network as a network like Mastodon.
The idea is that every user can install all of these three aspects on their own local PC to participate in the overall network (meaning having access to the social network, accessing global knowledge graphs and participating in decentralized learning to train their own bot).
Behaviour
In its behaviour its similar to that of a fungus (hence the name):
The shared model data can be thought of as the spores, which are also used by other fungi to adjust their models. The resulting AI chats available to the users are the "fruits" of the fungi.
Roughly, a fungi's behaviour is defined by a protocol, for example SPORE.
Decentralized, federated music recommendation system. Available to users through the social web, saving results in the semantic web and learning collabortively using decentralized federated learnin...
Uh, that's definitely too much technobabble about funghi. Can you dumb that down a bit for me and describe it from a user's perspective? How do I use this? How do I get my favorite music in? And in what form does it return recommendations to me? Do I need friends to make this useful?
Not even Star Trek Discovery goes at that pace. They give you some episodes with character development, Klingons etc before diving in to the tardigrades, mycelial network ... But kind of reminds me of that.
I feel like the point of metaphors is to explain something new with an idea that's already familiar and understood
If you have to explain the actual content AND the metaphorical comparison you're using to explain it, you've just kinda added a second thing to explain for very little communicative benefit
I like the aesthetic and sentiment of characterizating tech in this way, but I don't think it's particularly helpful
So its basically just a mastodon bot, a knowledge graph and an AI-model, who all work together.
The mastodon bot makes the functionality available to users (they can ask for song recommendations), the AI model is obviously trained and the knowledge graph is used to save the model and for collaborative communication between AI agents.
I'm not 100% sure whether it will be counter-productive or not, but maybe AI on the Fediverse could be a good thing. Like it could push the Fediverse forward (all big social networks nowadays have their own llms, ours should be federated of course). I think combining these three aspects (social web, semantic web/knowledge graphs and autonoumos agents) could be a cool thing. I have noticed how the narratives in the three departments are similar to one another (social web enthusiasts speak about walled gardens, data/knowledge enthusiasts about data silos and AI enthusiasts about big, centralized AI).
The following three resources point to how similar the approaches are:
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So its basically just a mastodon bot, a knowledge graph and an AI-model, who all work together.
The mastodon bot makes the functionality available to users (they can ask for song recommendations), the AI model is obviously trained and the knowledge graph is used to save the model and for collaborative communication between AI agents.
I'm not 100% sure whether it will be counter-productive or not, but maybe AI on the Fediverse could be a good thing. Like it could push the Fediverse forward (all big social networks nowadays have their own llms, ours should be federated of course). I think combining these three aspects (social web, semantic web/knowledge graphs and autonoumos agents) could be a cool thing. I have noticed how the narratives in the three departments are similar to one another (social web enthusiasts speak about walled gardens, data/knowledge enthusiasts about data silos and AI enthusiasts about big, centralized AI).
The following three resources point to how similar the approaches are:
I always imagined travelling back in time 100 years and trying to explain our tech.
-"We have personal communicators available at all times, that we can use to instantly communicate with anyone on Earth."
-"Wow! But I guess language barriers make it impossible?"
-'No, actually. A surprising amount of people in the world understand English. Also, we have instant translators in our communicators. I could contact someone in China right now and have a conversation about anything."
-"Incredible!! What sort of topics do you talk to them about?"
-"...I don't. It's kinda impolite to just start talking to strangers. I mostly talk to old friends from school. And my family."
Yeah it worked for the first part of internet history. You talked to people from all over the world.
Now people use the internet like a carnival freak show exhibition. They don't talk to others. They scroll to gawk at what oddities and tap the glass and jeer at the inhuman thing. Social media is designed this way.
Watching people infinite scroll is also like watching monkeys tossing proverbial dung in a zoo.
(btw i had to infinite scroll to read this threads comments until found this gem and replied. I'm prepared to evade monkeys with impure intentions and plenty of ammunition.)
Same goes for file managers. You telling me to search for content using one or two search factors? LOL!
I'm trying to think what shattered the illusion for me... Weirdly, one of the first ones was when I was in high school, my Spanish teacher told me that in Spain, they had hardly any computers (she had just visited that summer). I told that to a friend of my dad, and he was like "uh... No, pretty much everyone has them". Which wasn't propaganda, but I think they was the first time I felt ashamed of my ignorance
Then in college, I was having a discussion about politics with someone from Paris, and mentioned offhand how it's different because they're a socialist country. He laughed and said "what? We're not socialist". That was pounded into me since elementary school, that the UK and France were socialists.
The guy owned a business, and I knew this and the fact he was fairly wealthy due to said business... And that's when the illusion completely shattered, and I realized I was repeating shit I'd been taught without evaluating the information
Propaganda works. On all of us... It works less if you're aware of it and examine your own beliefs, but that shit creeps in th
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I'm trying to think what shattered the illusion for me... Weirdly, one of the first ones was when I was in high school, my Spanish teacher told me that in Spain, they had hardly any computers (she had just visited that summer). I told that to a friend of my dad, and he was like "uh... No, pretty much everyone has them". Which wasn't propaganda, but I think they was the first time I felt ashamed of my ignorance
Then in college, I was having a discussion about politics with someone from Paris, and mentioned offhand how it's different because they're a socialist country. He laughed and said "what? We're not socialist". That was pounded into me since elementary school, that the UK and France were socialists.
The guy owned a business, and I knew this and the fact he was fairly wealthy due to said business... And that's when the illusion completely shattered, and I realized I was repeating shit I'd been taught without evaluating the information
Propaganda works. On all of us... It works less if you're aware of it and examine your own beliefs, but that shit creeps in through the cracks. It's insidious
Very insidious and you can only be aware of the types you can identify, there are many more that you'll blindly accept until something like your experiences points it out to you; I think it's a lifelong thing to stay vigilant against it.
Who in school told you Britain and France are socialist? That was never the case. They were literally always allies, why would any school teach this? I know fox news viewers believe it for some reason but that certianly never impacted my curriculum
Elementary school through high school, and they taught socialism to basically be when the government runs services or really does anything someone else could be making money off it
I think healthcare was a big sticking point for the label, but they basically described any social safety net as socialist.
It not have been in your curriculum, but teachers watch mainstream media too...
my Spanish teacher told me that in Spain, they had hardly any computers
it's different because they're a socialist country. He laughed and said "what? We're not socialist". That was pounded into me since elementary school, that the UK and France were socialists
One of my favourite (?) conspiracy theories locally is regarding any left wing policy or social action. Like, you can just go to the meetings bro. Socialist alliance or whatever are super keen for new active members. You can literally go see how they make decisions.
Obviously, the sort of person that makes these sorts of claims aren't actually looking to be convinced of any truth.
Yep. Socialist orgs are generally public-facing and have no interest in secrecy, we're not hiding from people. We don't vet people before letting them see meetings like the neo-nazis and many politicians do, we're basically the same inside as we are outside. And it pays off: there's no fake persona to uphold, no paranoia about federal infiltration. Just walk in and have a look around, we're here to build a mass movement, not some arrogant secret conspiracy cell.
The Federal Reserve said Friday that it is leaving an international grouping of central banks that focused on how the financial system could help combat climate change. The Fed’s membership has been criticized by Republicans in Congress.
Oh yes, it's because we who are carrying out a genocide are so much more civilized than them, I see. China just isn't civilized enough, you say? And what skull measurement would you posit is responsible for that, Professor?
davel
in reply to schizoidman • • •modulus
in reply to davel • • •Haha, I was just going to post that. It's such a cliché:
And of course the cost is... not enough consumer spending and services. Right. (with a tiny nod towards healthcare.)
NOT_RICK
in reply to modulus • • •bdonvr
in reply to schizoidman • • •Literally the first line lmao was this meant to be a parody
superkret
in reply to schizoidman • • •Or they could have funneled those trillions into the private pockets of a few billionaires.
Sodium_nitride
in reply to schizoidman • • •Obviously. That's how the economy grows you buffoons.
I had a whole response typed out, but honestly, unless the article starts giving actual data and what the goals of the government were, any comment I make is just speculation.
Interestingly enough, I found a book that shows that TFP may almost be entirely a product how efficiently an economy processes energy resources. Although I doubt this is what the author of the article had in mind. Instead, they were probably thinking about some business magic racial supremacy number of something.
... show moreObviously. That's how the economy grows you buffoons.
I had a whole response typed out, but honestly, unless the article starts giving actual data and what the goals of the government were, any comment I make is just speculation.
Interestingly enough, I found a book that shows that TFP may almost be entirely a product how efficiently an economy processes energy resources. Although I doubt this is what the author of the article had in mind. Instead, they were probably thinking about some business magic racial supremacy number of something.
The existing policies of high capital spending and focus on manufacturing also complement each other. And have the benefit of picking up the whole world's slack from the de-industrialisation of America/Europe/Japan.
Bruh
The Second Law of Economics: Energy, Entropy , and The Origins of Wealth - Anna’s Archive
annas-archive.orgfreagle
in reply to schizoidman • • •They keep talking about fiscal cost as though money is a resource. MONEY IS NOT A RESOURCE. It's an arbitrary medium of exchange. It's only useful to measure money cost if you can translate it to either A) natural resource consumption, B) labor, C) externalities you want minimized, D) deepening ensnarement in foreign debt, or E) an increase in money supply disrupting exchange.
If China didn't borrow internationally to make those investments, it didn't get deeper into debt to it's enemies.
If China isn't seeing inflation, it didn't flood the money supply.
No country has come even close to fully pricing its externalities and China uses democracy to manage those, so the fiscal cost doesn't represent that.
If China has better things to do with its labor, then this could represent missed opportunities to do those better things. However, as we've seen, China has ever improving living conditions, infrastructure, education, cost of living, etc. It would be difficult for someone to argue what specific things that labor should have been allocated to.
And natura
... show moreThey keep talking about fiscal cost as though money is a resource. MONEY IS NOT A RESOURCE. It's an arbitrary medium of exchange. It's only useful to measure money cost if you can translate it to either A) natural resource consumption, B) labor, C) externalities you want minimized, D) deepening ensnarement in foreign debt, or E) an increase in money supply disrupting exchange.
If China didn't borrow internationally to make those investments, it didn't get deeper into debt to it's enemies.
If China isn't seeing inflation, it didn't flood the money supply.
No country has come even close to fully pricing its externalities and China uses democracy to manage those, so the fiscal cost doesn't represent that.
If China has better things to do with its labor, then this could represent missed opportunities to do those better things. However, as we've seen, China has ever improving living conditions, infrastructure, education, cost of living, etc. It would be difficult for someone to argue what specific things that labor should have been allocated to.
And natural resource consumption is very much the same.
Writing an entire article about the 'fiscal cost' as though money is an actual resource with real use valuebis exactly the sort of brain rot to expect from the North Atlantic.
Sodium_nitride
in reply to freagle • • •Well, in this case, they do have a valid point, in that the growth that China experienced was due to high amounts of capital investment rather than innovation per say. And as we know from the labor theory of value, high amounts of capital investment comes from a correspondingly high amount of the workforce being employed in producing the means of production (rather than consumption).
But to this point, there are 3 rebuttals
freagle
in reply to Sodium_nitride • • •Rapidity of growth is based on starting conditions, available labor, available natural resources, AND the available technological state.
When the starting conditions are making maximum use of available technology with the super majority of labor being employed towards the domestic economy, then the limiter to growth is the available technological state. Innovation in this case becomes the driver for growth as the delta between what is currently possible and what innovation makes possible is the domain of growth.
But then the starting conditions are not making maximum use of available technology, when the majority of labor is employed making an imperialist leech richer, and when natural resources are dominated by imperialists, then the delta between current state and potential state is predominantly in labor, natural resources, and building known technological capabilities. Innovations cannot even be taken advantage of under those starting conditions, let alone developed.
The idea that a peasant society should either innovate beyond the state of technology of the
... show moreRapidity of growth is based on starting conditions, available labor, available natural resources, AND the available technological state.
When the starting conditions are making maximum use of available technology with the super majority of labor being employed towards the domestic economy, then the limiter to growth is the available technological state. Innovation in this case becomes the driver for growth as the delta between what is currently possible and what innovation makes possible is the domain of growth.
But then the starting conditions are not making maximum use of available technology, when the majority of labor is employed making an imperialist leech richer, and when natural resources are dominated by imperialists, then the delta between current state and potential state is predominantly in labor, natural resources, and building known technological capabilities. Innovations cannot even be taken advantage of under those starting conditions, let alone developed.
The idea that a peasant society should either innovate beyond the state of technology of the imperialists or else should be tributary states is really just a position that everyone should be tributaries because innovation under imperialist dominance is not feasible as a means of growing an economy.
China's shift to innovation is therefore not a question of strategy but rather if material conditions and the shift to innovation will emerge only in so far as it is made possible and feasible by labor participation in domestic enrichment, natural resource sovereignty, and development of globally-known technologies that lack uncertainties.
Sodium_nitride
in reply to freagle • • •This is exactly the case. China has developed to the point where it can seriously consider a change in priorities. Of course, the overall course is still to race towards prosperous socialism but with changing material conditions* come changing tactics.
*the big one being Chinese labor becoming more expensive and Chinese industry becoming highly automated.