Mayoman68

Hot take: the narrative that politicians do not understand technology due to their age is giving them too much credit. They have entire offices full of staffers whose entire job is to explain these things to them in ways they understand, as I am sure they have for some of the more important things. They just don't care because their purpose is to serve corporations, not the public.

Mate I don't think most russian people are reading an obscure, western primarily english speaking social media site, and the ones that are are probably more likely to be against the war.

A lot of transit can just be electrified with overhead wires

Another interesting point is whether we attribute the successes and failures of a state on it's particular social, economic and political situation or it's ideology as the root cause of anything. Most people, when they agree with an ideology, will attribute the good things to the ideology and the bad things to specific circumstances, and the opposite with ideologies they do not agree with. The more nationalist Americans will tell you that Cuba is poor because it is communist, and that Bush invaded Iraq either because he was corrupt or because he was promoting freedom. However there's also the argument that Cuba is poor because it is sanctioned to hell by the US, and that Bush invaded Iraq because of American capitalist imperialism. Which one of these you agree with pretty much entirely depends on your ideological opinions rather than what actually happened, and as far as making a valid argument either one is at least a coherent point.

The reality is that you have elements of both the fundamental ideology and the specific political circumstances in every social outcome you see. Which is an idea quite fatal to most of the rhetoric you see nowadays and part of why it's impossible to have any political discussion with people you have fundamental disagreements with.

My stance on this starts with the things that a lot of people for the most part can admit are problems. Corporations with the power and wealth of small countries, concentration of money in the hands of a few, absurd costs of living, decreasing access to education, the environmental crisis, constant wars that destroy poorer countries, and in many countries poor healthcare outcomes. And this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Now why do these things happen? In my opinion the origin of these issues comes down to private ownership of vitally important organizations and infrastructure, and the resulting profit seeking regardless of the consequences. This also is how I would define capitalism, because capitalism is at its core only a way of organizing the economy.

There are then multiple answers to how we should address them. Regulating companies and reforming capitalism without addressing the root issue are a common one, and in some cases somewhat effective. However, in most cases such movements(which I would call social democratic) have a tendency to quickly walk back their achievements. For example, Tory attacks on the NHS in the UK have contributed to its reduction in quality. Or the walking back that the Mitterand administration did in France. Or the deregulation of trucking in the United States which led to substantially lower wages. This is also a western-centric argument on my part, because social democracy also relies on ruthlessly exploiting poorer countries' workers but that's a whole separate can of worms.

One could think of this backtracking as faults in the political system, which they perhaps are, but I think they are inherent to capitalism, because when you have such overwhelming power in megacorporations, they will inevitably eventually get their way as long as they exist. It's the equivalent of being surprised that you will eventually burn up if you try to stand on the sun despite your thermal shielding or other mitigations. Which isn't that absurd of a comparison because the sun's surface is only ~15 times hotter than a human if you measure from absolute zero.

The next answer is to try to, through monopoly breaking or other means, to revert capitalism to a former state of less concentrated capital. This is a fool's errand and a reactionary stance in most cases, because monopolization is inherent to capitalism, especially now that companies' fixed costs are immense, but the marginal cost of each new unit(be it a package sent through a carrier or a complex electronic device) is nearly negligible in comparison, making a monopoly the inevitable outcome.

And about at this point in my political development I found out about Marxism and it's overall proposal for an alternative to capitalism, and I found it the most compelling. The history of Marxism is also a whole separate can of worms so I won't go too far into it, but I agree with the Marxist class analysis that there are owners(most of which aren't even individuals anymore) and workers, and that workers' main political strength are their numbers. And a lot of capitalism reform proposals do actually rely on mass political organization of workers. Now what I say is, I think we can be more imaginative as to what that power can be used for. I don't think what comes next after capitalism will be perfect, but I think we can do much better.

I loved electronic snap circuits when I was 5-8 or so, so that's definitely a good one if they still make them

I was actually thinking about what it would take to have a truly peer to peer video site. Have clients simultaneously consume, serve and transcode content. It would obviously be concentrated in the hands of big enthusiasts and small video companies, but presumably it would be similar to the fediverse where you can choose from many instances.

I am not talking about individual choices but rather the social factors influencing those choices, please read a history book

But their countries are only poor because of the imperialism of rich countries for centuries. You're saying they should be grateful for rich economies helping them develop, when those rich economies are the reason they are poorer to begin with.

I fail to see why you think helping corporations earning money will help individuals, especially with raising taxes on them. Corporations' interests are lower wages and higher prices, worker's interests are higher wages and lower prices. The only way to then increase wages is to force companies to do so, either through job disloyalty, strikes, regulations, or etc. Don't see how lower taxes will make them pay more.

I mean the opinions of the voting public are nearly always more complex than either Republican or Democratic party dogma. The problem is that there is no substantial way of politically engaging besides voting. I would argue actually that generally the public is way more left wing than it is given credit for, but a lot of people have no accessible ways to transform these ideas into action. And for this I don't have an easy answer. Disclaimer, am a leftist so I would obviously think this, but I do still think that we would see more diverse political ideas if our political systems were made to be more open.

I find the "raise taxes to pay for social programs" and "cut corporate taxes" to be somewhat contradictory. Reagan and Thatcher were textbook neoliberals if you need any examples, and they destroyed social programs and labor unions rather than supporting them.