Ronin_5

joined 1 year ago
[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

So that was a load of crap that doesn’t go into the causes of inflation. Here’s a brief summary of how inflation actually works:

Inflation is when the value of a good grows IN PROPORTION to the value of money. Yes, both things have value independent of each other, and as such, we can see supply driven inflation if a country’s currency is devalued with respect to other countries, as it makes it difficult to import feedstock.

There are two primary causes of inflation: supply driven inflation, and demand driven inflation. Supply driven inflation is when not enough goods are produced, as with covid supply chain disruptions. Demand driven inflation is when demand grows with respect to supply, as with using graphics cards to mine bitcoin.

It should be noted that even these are market forces caused by suppliers and consumers, suppliers and consumers themselves don’t directly set prices. The people who own the suppliers do. They must read and manipulate market conditions in order to get the most profit out of their product.

During covid, we have had supply driven inflation due to supply chain disruptions, and hoarding to a lesser degree. However, when these issues have been resolved, we haven’t witnessed prices going back to normal. This is because the bourgeois have successfully read and manipulated market conditions.

In a way, what the bourge has done is a variant of the application of the mass line. They saw that material conditions had forced consumers to acclimate to higher prices, making the conditions ripe for another price increase. So that’s what they did, then they sold it as the new normal.

TBC

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 8 months ago

Millions of Spaniards were simultaneously aroused and they have no idea why

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 8 months ago

Chill. By MF, I meant the economists in the west.

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 8 months ago (2 children)

lol. MF thinks you can get more productivity by decreasing wages.

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Free speech is idealist in the same way that the free market is idealist. Some people will have the resources and authority to make their voices (or the voices of those who agree with them) louder than others, and drown them out.

Like, if you are THE socialist political entity, you should let people say what they want, and you should listen. And after listening, you should use dialectical and historical materialism to filter out progressive ideas from reactionary ones, and develop a mass line that’s neither falls into commandism or tailism.

Something something have faith in the masses.

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 13 points 8 months ago

It’s a useful way of viewing risk/reward and it’s not incompatible with communist theory.

For example, if you take the prisoner’s dilemma and change the risk/reward structure, you can change the equilibrium such that it’s far more likely to have people cooperate.

Unfortunately, that’s not really something that people talk about all that often, because it’s only used to optimize winnings for one party, not to optimize for maximum societal benefit.

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 8 months ago

🏴‍☠️

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 8 months ago

How hypocritical.

If you want to know more, I found this article here. Sex ed in China is mostly focused on disease prevention rather than sexual identity.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2331186X.2023.2270289

I can’t comment much, but I do know that there’s a lot of reactionary elements in China regarding not only lgbt issues but also gender equality as well.

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 11 points 8 months ago

You can use a small knife to depress the tab that locks into the ratcheting.

I do it a lot to re-use zip ties

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 8 months ago

Capitalism vs socialism

[–] Ronin_5@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 8 months ago

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/11/alabama-prison-missing-organs

Here’s another take by the guardian.

So the organs were not given to the family after the autopsy even when they’d requested it, nor were they at the university, where the autopsy was done.

 

I’ve been on a bit of a video essay binge as of late, and most of the good shit has been from Britain, whereas American content creators are mostly reactionary.

What gives?

 

A while back, I infiltrated a far right message board.

I happened upon a conversation between two Neo Nazis arguing about the holocaust. One of them was arguing that the number of victims were exaggerated. The other was arguing that it didn’t happen, that it was a fabrication, but it should have happened.

First as a tragedy, then as a farce.

 

If you click the countries tab, you’ll find a table with countries, and the number of cases as a respondent state vs cases that corporations in their state have taken out against foreign states.

If you put it in excel, and sort by largest number of cases as a claimant state, you’ll find that the US, the Netherlands, and the UK as the biggest exploiting countries. (Which actually explains how the Netherlands got so rich, their tendency for nationalism, and why the bourge was pushing so hard for brexit)

Sort by most cases as a dependent state and you’ll find that Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and Egypt as the countries that are the most exploited.

Some countries like Spain and Russia are both exploiting and exploited. China has surprisingly few cases despite the breadth of its operations.

 

There’s nothing I love more than using company time to analyze stats. Today’s subject of analysis is the income distribution in the US.

We can tell who the bourge are, from where their income comes from. I’ve highlighted the boxes showing that the top 10% (of households) gets most of their income from business earnings and dividends.

Similarly, we can see the massive difference in monthly income from the 70-80% bracket to the 80-90% bracket to be 3400/mo, and the jump from labour aristocracy to the bourge to be 21000/mo, generated through capital and the exploitation of labour.

Information is from BEA. Search “distribution of personal income”.

The accuracy of these figures are corroborated by Table 2, showing annual mean household income to be $106,000. I have no idea why the popular narrative is that median household income is $76,330.

 

It’s not too far of a stretch to say that our ideologies are derived from the examples around us. After all, it is the basis for materialism. But when those examples are based in ideals, then we wrap ourselves in a lie and our ideology is manipulated to the benefit of others.

Why am I writing this? Because propaganda doesn’t work if you know it is propaganda. Or maybe it does. But either way it’s worth a shot.


Stories

The prevalent ideal, and the structure which we are taught to perceive ourselves, (in the west) is the monomyth; the hero’s journey.

The hero’s journey is a story about individualism, where answering a call to adventure will result in the hero coming home not only better off but the struggle results in his transformation into a “great man”, tying into great man theory, which states that great men are heroes who are able to rise against the odds and defeat rivals while inspiring followers.


our perception of self

So as this is repeated throughout media, we start to apply this story structure to ourselves. (since our ideologies are derivative of the examples around us) We become potential heroes who need to undergo trials to become great men. These trials may be something direct like answering a draft, or indirect like working overtime. Refusal of the trial, by this framework, will lead to stagnation. His flowering world becomes a wasteland of stones.

(Yes, I’m being purposefully politically incorrect because it’s written in a sarcastic tone)

In other words, the hero’s journey stops becoming just a framework for fiction but a framework for life; a perception of life. And as an idealistic framework, it can be molded into whatever the propagandist sees fit, with convenient subsections and tools to do so.


Propagation (propaganda) of ideals

… is done through media. All Hollywood writers, up to the recent modern era have followed the framework of the hero’s journey. That’s why it’s so predictable. Any deviation will be considered a “risky endeavour” and will not be accepted. (I’ve been meaning to do a write up on risk in the future) As per Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda model, other story frameworks are filtered out through ownership.


An alternative

Society is a self referencing system. As part of that society, you are both the observer and participant in the system. As you, the observer, is impacted by the system, you will react accordingly to the system and seek to influence it.

As such, your life is not set in stone and your life will not play out like a story with an intro, climax, and resolution. Your life in capitalism will be, at best, you using the opportunities given to you to create more opportunities. If you don’t have any opportunities, then be prepared to beg for them.

And I put emphasis on the word given, because unlike the ideology where hero’s are born or they are made through struggle, in capitalism, you are selected by other great men to be a hero. There is a common saying that you must prove your worth in order to better your position, but that worth itself is subjective. The result is that bettering your position is completely subjective.


why did I write this? How can we use this?

What I provide to you is a paradigm for criticism and self criticism. In addition to understanding, analysis and criticism of society as a whole, you may also analyze yourself through this lens and identify any ideology that you have that you might want to rethink your position on, as chances are that you’ve been exposed to this media.

 

On Contradiction: “actually fucking talk to your comrades and your enemies, and maybe you’ll find some common ground instead of coming to fisticuffs”

On Practice: “touch grass”

 

I’ve gotten into playing around with air pistols lately as a good way of practicing. Going into this subculture, I found this practice called dieseling. It’s when you smear some kind of gel like lube or petroleum jelly around the pellet to create a better seal to maintain a higher pressure behind the pellet to give it better velocities.

But then I came across some claims that air guns were pushing pellets up to 1500 fps. If you google air guns breaking the sound barrier, you will find all sorts of these claims. This is physically impossible because the speed of sound is the limit if you’re using air as a propellant.

People think that “compression of gasses” detonates the propellant, making it achieve supersonic velocities, which doesn’t happen since the pellet is propelled by decompressing gasses.

Like. God damn. I will be smearing some vegetable oil around my pellets though.

 

Or start overlaying theory with dashcam footage.

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