• 0 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 26th, 2024

help-circle

  • If there are education and experience requirements imposed on judicial candidates, and then they are elected, this is not an issue. Because those who are elected are accountable to those who elected them

    (provided they can be removed from.power by the same people, which is one of those “checks and balances” Western "democracies " have imposed so we can’t remove them).

    That way you have professionals/experts who are accountable to the people. Obviously elections can always be tampered with and influenced by powerful and moneyed interests, but by assuming this is true and then making it the default is a bit daft tbh.


  • If you are elected into a position where you can enact change, those who elected you have expectations of you based on the policy you supported during the election.

    If, then, you turn around and do something completely different your actions no longer reflect the will of those who elected you, and you are not behaving in a representative manner and thus in an undemocratic way.

    So ignoring anything specific to the American system, class interests, etc., it is a losing battle to try and be anything different from the status quo and getting elected by aligning yourself with the status quo.

    A communist who gets elected by siding with a fascist is no longer a communist. A liberal cannot be a liberal if they denounce capitalism and side with socialists. They are fundamentally different ideas of who the political economy is designed for, completely contradictory ideas about hierarchy, property rights, human rights, and even what constitutes truth (liberal ideas are often utopian, like the “rational economic man”, and socialist/communist ideas are often based in the reality of the current and past material conditions, like believing people need homes and food, and a wealthy society should be able to provide these for itself, so people get homes and food. In contrast a liberal society would let the “market” provide these things in whatever way is profitable.




  • I’m not siding with you, but I’d like to take your idea and make it… Useful.

    Anytime someone engages in civil disobedience (like a protest) it is crucial that the correct people are targeted.

    For example: if you want to stop your school from investing in Israel you target the administration (President, VP, investment managers etc.) and specifically those who make the decisions. This could be protesting at fundraisers so that it deeply affects the image of the school and those in charge, and serves as a threat of reduced funding.

    You wouldn’t, for example, go into the classroom during a lecture and yell about Israel, making the lives of the students and professors worse. Why? Because the source of power and social change is the students, staff, and faculty, at the school. And annoying them creates more enemies rather than allies.

    Always do a “power analysis” to know who to talk to and bring on your side, and who you need to disrupt in order to make the change. Otherwise we ignore class solidarity (yes, soak up the pun) and are doomed to fail


  • Within any job, there is what your role is on paper, and what you actually do over the course of a work day. Often times what you actually do is much more than “expected”. Work to rule means that you stick explicitly to what your role is, and the way the company expects you to perform your duties. Or rather, what they expect on paper.

    An example: Unionized employees will often “work to rule” as one of the first steps aimed at putting pressure on an employer to negotiate. It’s an entirely legal thing to do, and serves to exemplify the disconnect between on paper job expectations (what you are paid for), and real expectations.

    Thus, working as per your contract/job description with minimal deviation, will minimize how much you are exploited by ensuring you only do the work out are paid for.







  • One of the main reasons we as a society care about renewables is that we need to reduce CO2 emissions (and I’d like to think we care about others too). This article doesn’t mention anything about how much less CO2 is now being released. If we take EPA numbers from 2022, assume that they represent 100% non-renewable energy, take the 25% of those numbers that represent electricity generation and reduce the total.of that proportion we have a reduction of approximately 8% CO2 emissions. Great!

    So why do our emissions keep increasing year over year?

    A political economic system which requires infinite growth to sustain itself, requires growth in consumption, and production. If emissions go down, some industry will suffer (namely oil and gas), so their products must be used elsewhere. A collapse of the oil and gas industry would be an economic nightmare the way we currently organize our economy.

    And that is why we need to move beyond capitalism.