He does have darn good shoe ducking reflexes, though.

Ha! We reached max comment depth so I’m replying here. Feel free to answer or don’t or just tell me to end this I think lemmy wants to send us a message.

If I had a dime for every time a politician blamed colonialism for the consequences of their corruption I’d have enough money to buy them. Which, btw, would be illegal. As in: It’s illegal for me, under domestic law, to bribe people abroad that’s why the Chinese are making inroads in Africa we’re not matching their bribes, any more. Russia, at least, is pretty much out of the game now after they overextended, they’re at least a magnitude worse than the Chinese in approach.

Or, differently put: Maybe be a bit more specific when you say “global south” or “global north”. We’re currently defending Ukraine against imperial aggression from the north, you might’ve heard of that.

What drives our economies, btw, what makes us so rich, is labour productivity, industry with high degrees of automation, uncoupling value-add from labour investment. Which is why it’s so fucked to see a country like South Africa fall to the consequences of corruption, to wit, more blackouts than electricity production. No, it wasn’t evil England who made the ANC bleed Escom dry. Those are domestic problems requiring domestic solutions.

Intel and overheating.

If you get the time do read up on it, aside from checking that everything is indeed kosher, ask why you haven’t heard of it before. Why, in the list of data points you are exposed to, one that does not fit the colonial exploitation narrative seems to be missing.

Anyhow short rundown: Germany needs green hydrogen for its industry (at least until fusion, it’s dependent on energy inputs), Namibia has lots of wind and sun, world’s best location in fact, and Germany the tech to turn that into electricity, then into hydrogen, then into ammonia for transport. Germany is going to finance the initial stage of the project which includes enough generation capacity for Namibia’s electricity demands as well as to start exporting. IIRC it also includes fixing up the Namibian electricity grid. Namibia is planning on using its revenue share to further expand things and become an exporter of both green energy and refined metals, because when you have lots of hydrogen and also lots of iron ore it does make sense to export steel instead of ore, if not finished metal products. Value added yadayada you know your Marx.

And Namibia really can use the extra money. There’s plenty of stuff to invest in, from making sure San are not malnourished over not re-introducing school tuition to speeding up land reform. With easy access to capital and material, I’m sure Namibia will become a manufacturing powerhouse, at least compared to its population size. Sensible people look for win-win situations, and this is one of them. SWAPO even calls it Socialism with Namibian characteristics.

(Side note: Australians so far do not seem to have understood that it makes sense to keep the value-add in country, it’s not like they’re lacking in cheap energy, or the capacity to tap it. Confounds me to this day).

Wikipedia does not consider anything anything, it describes how other people describe it. Basic media literacy, wikipedia is an encyclopedia. You seem to be confusing racism with banter and it’s kinda telling you can’t tell the difference.

The IMF brutally exploits the Global South with predatory loans.

The IMF did a lot of shit especially in the past, but don’t pretend that loans were forced on states, or they would treat even EU countries any differently (remember Greece?), or that it wouldn’t be a UN institution that the global south itself co-founded. Haiti was made to take on debt, ages ago, and France is skirting its responsibility, yes. But IMF loans? If you don’t want them, don’t take them.

What you’re doing here is blaming stupid decisions of southern governments on the north. You act as if you were incapable of governing yourselves.

But it’s oh so fucking easy to blame diffuse foreign powers. It’s a tactic employed by many politicians in the global south: “Don’t look at our corruption, blame the evil Europeans”. They’re distracting you and you’re falling for it hook, line, and sinker.

Macron

…and the French are making fun of him for it. He’s not exactly popular, as you might have heard. His only saving grace is that he’s not LePen.

I’m curious: What do you think about the German-Namibian hydrogen project?

Guess Wikipedia is “tankie” now.

You did not read the article. It makes a clear distinction between council democracy itself (soviet means council), and what was implemented in the USSR. There did exist some democracy on lower levels that were not of immediate interest to the higher-ups, but that was also the case under monarchism.

Your next paragraph is worse, when you rely on “any East European.” Nostalgia for the Soviet Union is well-documeneted. 66% of Russians polled in 2015 want Socialism back,

Russians have neither a liberal democracy nor a social market economy. They’re also not terribly educated about the outside world. Ask Poles, ask Ukrainians, ask Romanians.

and this number is actually a good deal higher in many post-soviet sattelite states.

That asks specifically about the economic situation. Probably due to current factors such as affordability of rent, you won’t see me arguing that there’s work to do in those areas. Oh wait Hungary tops the list yep that’s not surprising they just got EU funds cut due to democratic backsliding and they were very much a net recipient. Fidez is a bunch of corrupt fascists. We’ll have to switch stereotypes around, Romanians are supposed to be the thieves I guess it’s ok they can still be the drunks.

As for your defense of Imperialism, I’m quite happy to be proven right, you’re a neoliberal at heart with an Anarchist coat of paint. No Anarchist I have ever spoken to, regardless of their opinion of the USSR, has said Imperialism is fine once it has been pointed out.

Which imperialism did I defend? I said that we stopped sailing cannon boats up rivers. I’m fucking European don’t dare blaming shit Seppos do on us.

Unless you mean the “pressure companies abroad into not using slave labour” thing in which case yes I’m completely fine with us throwing our big economic dick around. Do you have any issues with us using our economical power to combat slave labour and other forms of exploitation, even against the will of governments in the global south?

And, no, we’re not the “same economic bloc” as the US. This is our bloc. Mercosur is likely to come into force soon, US is way unlikely to ever happen. Things that may puzzle you: It actually includes Vietnam.

The Third World is not poor. You don’t go to poor countries to make money. There are very few poor countries in this world. Most countries are rich! The Philippines are rich! Brazil is rich! Mexico is rich! Chile is rich! Only the people are poor.

…then elect better governments? It’s your countries, your responsibility. Do something with those riches, like for starters distributing them fairly, and growing them. Are we supposed to swoop in and direct you in how to do it? We’d very likely do a better job this time around but generally lost the taste for imperialism so the answer is no.

Why do you keep replying? What is your goal?

To save your soul.

Your bits on the USSR translate to “I said it wasn’t democratic” as well as “state and public control is totally different and in the USSR it wasn’t public” so they can be safely ignored, given the books I already linked proving otherwise.

Noone but tankies considers the USSR to have been democratic. You can use a different, non-standard, sectarian, definition of a common concept all you want but don’t be confused if people don’t agree with your equivocation tactics.

As for Imperialism, I mean you specifically who said you wanted to live in a Social Democracy in the Global North rather than Socialism.

No. I said I do not want to live under what you call socialism, which is, in the best case, red-painted oligarchy. I’d love there to be actual socialism but in the meantime, until material conditions are created which actually allow a revolution, and that includes resilience against a Bolshevik counter-revolution, a liberal democracy with a social market economy is adequate. It is an improvement over your red-painted oligarchy, ask any East European.

As to your implied accusation of colonial exploitation: First off, there’s no cannon boats of ours sailing up your rivers, we gave that up long ago: If you don’t want to sell us stuff, then don’t sell us stuff. Secondly, this. The USSR never cared about the conditions the people producing their imports are in, somehow a social market economy does manage to.

Please explain how a democratic, publicly owned economy is “feudalism.”

Democratic is not what the USSR was, and that style of thing is the only thing Marxists ever achieved. There’s also a difference between public ownership and state control, doubly so in non-democracies. Also you’re leaving out a model not really seen anywhere outside of liberal democracies and that’s foundations, that is, self-owning companies. Zeiss is a good example. Their purpose, according to statute, pretty much say “We do optics and funnel some money to the University of Jena”, no shareholder interest at all.

As for prefiguration, it doesn’t seem to be possible in a Capitalist state so far either, so again you just approve of Imperialism and Capitalism so long as it’s your state that sits on top of the Global South.

Dude Latinos are the most vocal and active in the prefigurative space. There’s a reason we use a Portuguese term, “especifismo”, for a basic organisational principle. It’s the failure to think outside of the vanguardist box that makes Marxists not achieve anything but regression: Don’t dilute yourself to be better and more enlightened. You are not, you’re also a mere human. Anarchists understand we need to eat humble pie when talking to people, that we do not have all the answers, that all we have is a good compass and a toolbox that can help people to walk into that direction, on their own terms, at their own pace, organically, without coercion, which is crucial because the end goal does not contain any coercion.

Labour vouchers being used to buy goods and services from the social fund isn’t money, because they are destroyed upon use.

How do you eat if you don’t have a labour voucher? How is that “to everyone according to need”? It’s the same “bow to the bosses or starve” tyranny as capitalism without welfare state.

You’d rather have Capitalism, warts and all, than Socialism.

No. I would rather have liberal democracy than regress to feudalism with a different coat of paint. Actionism is a trap, the system is begging you to oppose it in certain ways because doing so will only reinforce it. If you want to sit on the long end of the leaver, you might need to walk some distance.

their jobs are extremely dirty and toxic, risk their health and safety, and most do so because they need to make a living

Then get them safety equipment and robots.

You want things to be de-commodified, don’t you? “A stateless, classless, moneyless society”. You say currently sewerage workers are compelled by money, I take that to mean that you think they only do it because they need money because otherwise they’d starve.

But they would be supplied for in communism whether they do that job or not. So why would they still choose to do the work? For the greater good, of course. This isn’t something that’s unique to Anarchism. You’re trying to saw off a branch that you yourself are sitting on.

Moreover, this “prefiguration” phase would be be better accomplished in a Socialist state, would it not?

In a soviet-style state: Definitely not. You need freedom of association to be able to get people used to the necessary modes of organisation. The USSR did not tolerate such things, China does not tolerate such things. The reason is simple: They do understand that it is in direct contradiction to the centralisation of power, and thereby the privileges of the party. To do prefiguration, you have to eat humble pie.

What happens between now and that level of automation?

We already do have robots that clean sewers, cleaning sewers isn’t actually the point but doing things “people don’t want to” and, duh, what’ll happen is inventing all automation that might be necessary, as part of prefiguration.

In the meantime I would much rather have a socdem government than a tankie boot in my face. Ask anyone from a post-soviet country as to why.

You’re making assumptions about me

No. I’m drawing conclusions from your choice of argument. What, in your mind, and be honest now, is the social standing of people doing such jobs? Are they respected? Do you respect them? Investigate the value attached to those things, and where those judgements really come from. Did you form them yourself, after careful analysis? Do you have them because it is socially expected that you have them? Is it fantasy to value the sewer worker next door more than Elon Musk? Do you think a society, at large, might be capable of doing that?

You want this now,

When the fuck am I supposed to have said that? Did you, *drumroll*, assume?

…ok you got me. I want this now. I also want bedtime to be abolished. But I’m also an adult, old enough to understand that actionism does not lead anywhere as the socio-psychological component of the system is furnished to prompt exactly that unreflected actionism that reinforces it. Your rebellion has been factored into the equation and is being used against your dreams. It is not sufficient to swim against the stream, you have to get out of the river. It’s nice here, btw, I have dry socks.

You complained that I was not providing my own, only comments on yours.

You’ll have plenty of protective equipment. That’s not the issue. You’ll even have robots.

The issue, I think, is that you don’t know what it’s like to be part of a tribe, never have felt the solidarity and the motivation to contribute according to your abilities that comes along with it.

A state doesn’t need to be in Europe to join, it just needs to be European, whatever that means, the treaties don’t say. There’s no geographical limits much less strict ones, it was deliberately left open. The requirements regarding democracy and stability are much more strict and spelled out.

It’d be politically weird to say the least to bar a state that is full of EU citizens from joining the EU. And when it comes to geostrategy not taking them in would be right-out stupid. If you ask some editorialists then even Canada is, in principle, on the table.

A lot of necessary jobs go undone if nobody wants to do them, like garbage disposal, sewer maintenance, etc.

Do you want to clean your toilet?

And if it’s going to be full-blown AGI then we’ll become AI psychologists.

Not Scholz in particular, all Seeheimer hate the term but they were not successful in removing it from the programme, here it is.

they used opposite genders

Not necessarily. For IBM PCs that was true, but my UltraSPARC had a differently-gendered serial port which was very annoying because neither standard straight nor null-modem cables worked. It was a DB-25, carrying two ports.

Those connectors were used for a lot of different things, with no autonegotiation no nothing. At least the pinout for port A was compatible with the standard DB-25 one-port pinout, just with different gender.

Greenland won’t declare independence before it is ready to do so, and it’s very likely that when they do it they will do it after or at the same time as re-joining the EU.

The Greenland independence sentiment is of the “we’re our own nation, we should build ourselves up and stand on our own among fellow nations” kind, not the “the Danes are terrible we need to get away from them as fast as possible” one.

They want to go home earlier, they don’t care enough, they don’t think it’s important enough, etc

And why would workers want that? Or, differently put: If they don’t care, why are they working in the first place?

Any job worth doing is worth doing right. That’s the intrinsic value of work, those things you mentioned only come into play when work is compelled by external factors. Convince people to work instead of compelling them and there will be intrinsic motivation and yes they’re going to do it right.

“Marxism isn’t proper socialism” is a story as old as Marx, btw. There were always people who disagreed with him, vehemently so, and he didn’t found the worker’s movement.

There’s nothing emotionally difficult about this. If you want statements to be in a particular form then it’s up to you to provide them.