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what does degrowth look like?
  • I think the growth vs. degrowth framing is really poorly defined, there's not a clear distinction between capitalist growth (basically GDP) and development of the productive forces and any discussion of the topic easily devolves into people talking past each other because they're using different definitions for the same terms.

    A lot of GDP growth today is in things that manipulate the market and can be gotten rid of entirely like advertising, which is nearly 20% of US GDP by itself. This makes it relatively easy to get rid of but is a double edged sword. This focus on financial growth over the 'actual' economy over the past ~50 years has left it neglected and so the (re)development of the productive forces of North America (not just the US since the economy is already quite integrated) will require massive investment and thus 'growth'. It will obviously be a different sort of growth than has been done before (yes, even than the Soviets) so it is hard to say how exactly it will look but it won't happen unless the economy is under the control of the mass of people who make it up.

    Fossil fuel extraction will continue probably for a very long time (we use it for nearly everything) but at a greatly reduced scale as alternatives are developed. Modern agriculture is actually fairly space (and thus calorie per hectare) inefficient because it's easier to automate and thus reduce labor costs. Likely there will be many more people who work in agriculture but still on the order of single digit percentages of the population (just more than the ~2% it is now). Enhanced weathering has the potential to be a sort of Hail Mary for CO2 sequestration, it can also be used on cropfields as fertilizer though it probably can't replace all nitrogen fertilizer but I don't know enough about it to really say either way. I think other forms of CO2 sequestration are mostly in the realm of fantasy so hopefully enhanced weathering doesn't have too many detrimental side-effects.

    As for resource extraction more generally, it will also have to continue for a long time in all likelihood. Perhaps deep sea mining of those naturally occurring polymetallic nodules will be less impactful than traditional mining, perhaps not. Asteroid mining could genuinely be revolutionary in this aspect but the investment involved to get it a necessary scale would probably take too long for it to be a viable short-term solution even if there was a revolution tomorrow. Things can be done to make traditional mining less impactful that aren't currently because they aren't profitable, but it will likely be the worst thing that continues in any transition. Rewilding other areas to compensate will ease the damage.

    It will be a difficult transition. Go too slow and you risk the environment degrading to the point of the collapse of production entirely. Go too fast and you risk the same by not having the inputs necessary to sustain it. The market is too slow and passive to handle the situation and so it will only be overcome if the (real) economy can be steered by society as a whole.

  • What descriptors instantly kill your desire to play a game?
  • 5v5. All the most toxic games are 5v5, whether its CSGO or League etc. I can't stand them. Though the real problem is automated matchmaking and lack of server browsers, most other pvp games have ways of mitigating the toxicity but 5v5's really just encourage it full tilt.

    I really wish larger team based esport games were the ones that took off, but alas.

  • China democratises all workplaces by signing law requiring a "Employee Assembly" as an organ of all companies
  • This all comes with the caveat of it being a translation but I really don't think it says what you think it does.

    Section I just say the employees are informed of and get a performative say in what the company was already planning on doing, not that they get an actual say in that plan. Section II is only about working conditions and not about the nature of the work itself, if it should be done, how best to do it, etc. Section III also is only about contract points which deal with remuneration and not with the actual business of the company. This part of Section IV;

    Electing or dismissing employee directors and employee supervisors

    Is suspiciously worded and makes me think that it really only means their direct managers and department heads, which of course is an improvement but they aren't voting on whether major shareholders get a seat on the board of directors or not. Even if it did include the regular C suite, it absolutely does not include members of the company appointed by the party/state.

    Some of the better seeming parts have no teeth.

    electing employee representatives to meetings of creditors and creditors’ committees of the enterprise subject to bankruptcy proceedings in accordance with the law

    Just says they get to show up to the meeting, not that they actually have any say in that meeting. Especially the last part of section IV.

    and recommending or electing management personnel of the enterprise as authorized

    Is super weasel wordy. This could be satisfied just by acknowledging the recommendation of the assembly, it doesn't actually require the company to follow that recommendation.

    Section V also has no teeth. There is no mention whatsoever of the makeup of the board of directors or what say shareholders have. Which leads me to believe that this is whole thing is just designed to appease workers and not actually provide workplace democracy. To be clear, it is a potentially a step in the right direction if it is given teeth but as it stands it is absolutely just as 'class collaborationist' as Germany's.

    Of course all of this ignores the corrupting and profit maximizing nature of modern corporations which is not changed one iota just by changing who can vote for who is in charge (as evidenced by large co-ops like Mondragon) especially since they still have to compete against corporations who absolutely will cut every corner and cheat to get ahead.

    Edit: I forgot how to format

  • China democratises all workplaces by signing law requiring a "Employee Assembly" as an organ of all companies
  • Guess I'll be the Lib.

    How is this any different than the German codetermination system? Honestly it seems like they're just copying it, though it does apply to small businesses too. Which is cool but I wouldn't call it workplace democracy.

  • Wealth of the Top 1% in US Hits All-Time High of $45 Trillion
  • I know you're just making a comparison but if you actually paid off the national debt you would destroy the dollar.

    Which you actually don't want to do unless there's a viable alternative, which there isn't atm.

    Really their wealth should be appropriated to build sustainable infrastructure across the globe so we can survive the catastrophe they've created without mass death (or minimize it as much as possible). But if you have the political will to do that then you might as well just push the communism button.

  • Why do people fall into Islamic fundamentalism?
  • I'd recommend the book Engineers of Jihad. It's precisely the people who wish to change the world and then are denied by external forces (largely the U.S. in this case) that are primed for radicalization.

    Also iirc, Bashar al-Assad's father was the one who actually developed the tactic/justification but I'm having trouble finding a source, it's early.

  • The U.S. Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China
  • Having read the article now, its just a run of the mill fearmongering piece for more funding. I don't think we should take them as true believers, obviously some are dumb enough to be but this article in particular doesn't seem to be doing that.

  • China to debut large reusable rockets in 2025 and 2026
  • Oh sorry, to clarify: The 5m one in the article is almost certainly Long March 10. They seem to have decided to make the first stage reusable, contrary to previous statements. It's not clear if that means just the boosters or the boosters and the core but I would guess all three like falcon heavy does. It's also, at least for now, the rocket they plan on sending people to the moon with before 2030 with an Apollo-style lander.

    The smaller 4 meter one seems to be for a commercial rocket.

    Long March 9 last I saw was still not planned to be reusable until the 2040's but if this recent space push actually turns into a race I'm sure they'll accelerate that.

  • Transphobia, biphobia, racism, and pegging: the Red Scare subreddit puts its finger on the pulse of today's culture war issues
  • I really love this trend of incels/redditors making anything to do with women gay. Like literal is it gay to fuck your wife kind of moments, it's just so funny.

    Also the guy saying to him that being the victim is female coded is the funniest shit I've read in awhile.

  • China to debut large reusable rockets in 2025 and 2026
  • Long March 10 (the 5m one in the article) isn't a Starship/Super Heavy competitor, it's a Falcon Heavy competitor. I.e. it's only barely considered a super-heavy and depending on the reuse penalties, it might only be one if it's launched as expendable. I'm guessing most of the specs on Wikipedia are very out of date so it's hard to tell exactly.

    They'll probably go through the same process of getting the core and boosters reusable but not bothering with the second stage and just push Long March 9 development instead. Obviously they have to walk before they can run but at this rate they're still about ~8-10 years behind.

  • What changed?
  • But it was clear by then that it wasn't going to overtake the US economically like was feared earlier. If it was clearly seen that the USSR was beating the US economically it would give lie to the whole system.

    This isn't going to happen with China, unless their economy fundamentally changes.

  • Rare Stalin L
  • Not just nationalism but also our naivete to how states act, regardless of whether they are 'socialist' or not. So many of the USSR's decisions prioritized the immediate interests/survival of the state at the expense of revolutions abroad and eventually those betrayals left it without the external support to survive the West's onslaught.

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    impartial_fanboy [he/him] @hexbear.net
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