[wat0n]

What do you think of the community-control direction over policing:

It depends on what precise form it takes. But the use of bodycams, for instance, leans towards that direction by making it possible to watch whatever happened.

Okay, I'm anti-War-on-(some)-Drugs as well.

What other markets, outside of the drugs trade, are you referring to, that could conceivably *match* the revenues, and the violence, of the drugs trade? Would there really have to be an *increase* in policing if the War-on-(some)-Drugs could be wound-down?

While I doubt the lost revenue can be fully replaced, I would expect them to engage in other forms of crime (e.g. robberies, extortion, maybe murders for hire, etc) to compensate for it. This would be need to be stopped by the police.

What would the 'broader economic recovery plan' look like?

Probably, a mix of direct cash transfers and investment in developing those communities. My experience living in Chicago is that there are parts of the city that are clearly underserved compared to the upper middle class neighborhoods - in terms of the volume of economic activity in those neighborhoods, the availability of stores, etc - and this is something their residents are fully aware of.

And how would the killer cops of *non*-drug-related killings be curtailed? It's the topic of this thread.

That's more complicated, bodycams are one aspect of the strategy but they are not the end of it of course. Another one might be to strengthen arms control - the Second Amendment doesn't mean people have the right to carry whatever firearms they want, and as such the Constitution does allow the Government to regulate carry. Firearms are also a major reason why the American police is as armed as it is, this is keeping in mind you can find people who own assault rifles and the like. That's one of the costs of allowing the people to own guns (I personally think the pros outweigh the cons here, although those pros are only realized in very particular yet critical situations. It's very similar to the pros of having a military in that sense).

A more fundamental and difficult change needs to come from the wider society itself, particularly when it comes to jury behavior, but it does go well beyond that. Racism will truly disappear when it disappears from society at large, since the Government itself is ultimately a part of it. And even if the Government is not racist, many people will be suspicious of it if racism still exists in the wider societies.

A workers-of-the-world workers state could, as well, either use state-personnel-type staffing *or* AI-type automated, digital-based processing for social service kinds of claims from the public -- again, it wouldn't matter for the *function* but, yes, there would be fewer jobs if automation is implemented.

Correct, and that means then that automation does involve a political problem regardless of the economic and political system in place.

I'm not *favoring* the fully-automated approach to state social services provisioning -- I'm logistically *neutral*, because it's the *function* of providing social services -- the *politics* of it -- that is at-issue, foremostly. If government employees are involved in the administration of social services then I am *for* them and their sector as a national budget priority.

I think it may be important to distinguish between the politics of determining what should be provided and the bureaucracy of doing so. Automation would likely affect the latter and not the former, yet this process of dealing with the bureaucrats themselves is political indeed although it's over a very concrete and specific issue.

Yes, it *is* bonapartism, as I just described, because the civilian government has almost entirely turned-over governance to the executive-branch institutions, thus *politicizing* them, as indicated by the term *you* used, 'the Deep State'. This is a nationalist *weakness*, by the way, because it's getting so lopsided in favor of the executive branch as to *almost* be a full-blown constitutional crisis. Even the military brass has had to *repudiate* Trump's proto-fascism, denying him the use of the military to quash domestic protests. If that isn't politicization / bonapartism, I don't know what *is*.

But what you are describing, is something inherent to any sort of government. Military men getting into politics is way, way older than bonapartism. And they sometimes do, although in a quite discrete way - which is why ministries of defense exist.

Okay, would you like to *specify* what it is you're alluding to, for both of these categories?

I find it hard to do so exhaustively (instead, we could evaluate them on a case by case basis). As far as policing goes, I think it depends on each PD - but as a matter of principle, in my view the very existence of the police is necessary because privatizing the activity would lead to way more abuses with zero guarantee of any good results. And there are good reasons for this, since policing is a specialized activity like most others in today's world.

I do agree with your stated principle here, and I think that that's the political issue that will be at-stake / come to the fore as we approach a technological state of full-automation.

Do *you* have any predictions or ruminations on how society could potentially resolve this increasing discrepancy between private ownership (of workerless fully-automated mass production), and decreasing employment and incomes on the part of workers and the public in general -- ? (How would people be able to *afford* mass-produced products if they're no longer needed as workers anymore, and thus have *zero* income to *spend* on such privately-owned products?)

Personally, I'd go for the establishment of a system of large conditional transfers. The automation that's already began cannot be used for all existing jobs and it will also generate new ones. Society should thus redirect training to that effect, and not just of current workers but of the future ones as well. Furthermore this system would also be a good way for making sure that children are getting the care they need, from vaccination to school attendance and other seemingly basic things we would expect them to get but that some families may not be willing to ensure.

The idea is to deal with income inequality, but without having an underclass that becomes dependent on Government aid forever and that doesn't become part of a patronage network with any given political party. The idea of setting conditions is paternalistic (which is odd coming from a moderate liberal guy like I am) but taxpayers have every right to expect their money to be used adequately, and to lead to positive externalities.

Well, I'm not anti-teacher, but, yeah, I think 7-year-olds could use Wikipedia on their own if it came to that.

I'm not pro-teacher either but I think it's unlikely to happen. There are good developmental reasons for this.

The socialist position does *not* call for the ending of *personal* property, meaning what individuals themselves use, for their personal needs.

Yes, private property -- meaning private control of the means of mass industrial production, primarily -- *is* the main problem in society, because it's what maintains the *class divide*, leaving those who *don't* own private property to be compelled to *sell their labor* for the necessities of life and living, while those who *do* own private property are allowed to *benefit*, by exploiting the labor of those who work to produce commodities, by expropriating surplus labor value from those workers.

I'm all for eliminating the crimes that are based on competition for possession of capital, wealth, and private property of all kinds, by *eliminating* capital, wealth, and private property. The workers of the world can *collectivize* such under their collective control, so as to permanently transcend capitalist commodity relations once and for all.

Ok but theft for example is a crime that deals with personal property, not just private property. That means policing those will still be necessary even under that system.

[QatzelOk]

It's actually *not* a given that laws would be required for a post-capitalist, socialist-type society and its civil society, because the preceding, requisite *proletarian revolution* would do much in the way of setting a *precedent* of social norms for the communist-type society that it ushers-in.

Yes, and this socialist paradise won't require police either.

But by throwing these things away right now, long before any egalitarian society has taken hold, we guarantee that we will never have any of the things you write about.

Just like the resilient capitalists in Venezuela, our own corporate masters will sabotage and terrorize the unpoliced population until we are all under martial law while Corporate Strongmen are prepped for a heroic return.

Until the current order has been swept away, the police will be very useful in maintaining some kind of livable society. And for the working class to be constantly threatening the police with poverty and accusastions of being the primary agents of social racism... is to do the work of the 1% who would most certainly like the police to run into their arms.

[ckaihatsu]

It depends on what precise form it takes. But the use of bodycams, for instance, leans towards that direction by making it possible to watch whatever happened.

Okay, body cams is a *reform*, and I'll add that it needs to be *enforced*, because otherwise many cops will just *turn them off*, just as they also are known to cover up their badge numbers.

Would you like to address the issue of full community *control* over the police hierarchy?

While I doubt the lost revenue can be fully replaced, I would expect them to engage in other forms of crime (e.g. robberies, extortion, maybe murders for hire, etc) to compensate for it. This would be need to be stopped by the police.

Sure, I'm all for policing over people's *personal* property, meaning whatever they themselves *personally*, individually use, but unfortunately bourgeois rule also considers corporations to have the same rights that *people* do, so 'corporate personhood' is obviously a misguided overextension of civil rights to the interests of *capital*.

There's also all of the *financial* corruption that is usually not policed, like offshore accounts for the sake of money laundering and tax evasion (the 'Panama Papers' expose), and the Libor rate-fixing scandal. The state isn't so great at policing these white-collar loopholes -- most major corporations pay *zero* tax.

Probably, a mix of direct cash transfers and investment in developing those communities. My experience living in Chicago is that there are parts of the city that are clearly underserved compared to the upper middle class neighborhoods - in terms of the volume of economic activity in those neighborhoods, the availability of stores, etc - and this is something their residents are fully aware of.

Okay, you're indicating 'redlining' -- good call.

Would you support *full nationalization* of all private infrastructure, including banking? The bailouts are now of a quantity that the state may as well just take them over (so that the public gets its money's worth), to de-privatize and administer such critical economic functions.

That's more complicated, bodycams are one aspect of the strategy but they are not the end of it of course. Another one might be to strengthen arms control - the Second Amendment doesn't mean people have the right to carry whatever firearms they want, and as such the Constitution does allow the Government to regulate carry. Firearms are also a major reason why the American police is as armed as it is, this is keeping in mind you can find people who own assault rifles and the like. That's one of the costs of allowing the people to own guns (I personally think the pros outweigh the cons here, although those pros are only realized in very particular yet critical situations. It's very similar to the pros of having a military in that sense).

Okay, I'm not a 'Second Amendment' type, but I don't trust the government to regulate any technology for personal use, and that includes guns. I think it could readily become spurious 'political hay' for the establishment when it's really a political non-issue.

A more fundamental and difficult change needs to come from the wider society itself, particularly when it comes to jury behavior, but it does go well beyond that. Racism will truly disappear when it disappears from society at large, since the Government itself is ultimately a part of it. And even if the Government is not racist, many people will be suspicious of it if racism still exists in the wider societies.

I mentioned recently that I think the *majority* of civil society is now basically 'multicultural' in its social attitudes, and it's the *government* that is now the overwhelming source of all racism, through its institutional policies like that of allowing redlining and also exonerating killer cops.

Would you consider the recent George Floyd anti-racist protests to be a good example of 'from the wider society itself', and 'from society at large'?

Correct, and that means then that automation does involve a political problem regardless of the economic and political system in place.

Oh, *I* don't think so, because whatever kind of hierarchy (of logistics / operations) is used, there would still be some political person *authority* at the apex, who would then be politically accountable to the public in some way. I don't think the bourgeois state would summarily *abolish itself* and turn everything over to a machine AI, despite scurrilous claims of such from certain fearmongerers.

I think it may be important to distinguish between the politics of determining what should be provided and the bureaucracy of doing so. Automation would likely affect the latter and not the former, yet this process of dealing with the bureaucrats themselves is political indeed although it's over a very concrete and specific issue.

Yes, exactly, and I said just that in the previous segment.

But what you are describing, is something inherent to any sort of government. Military men getting into politics is way, way older than bonapartism. And they sometimes do, although in a quite discrete way - which is why ministries of defense exist.

Sorry, but I'll have to argue this point -- usually the military is *subsumed* under the civilian government apparatus. Today's bonapartism is full-blown since it's out in the open.

I find it hard to do so exhaustively (instead, we could evaluate them on a case by case basis). As far as policing goes, I think it depends on each PD - but as a matter of principle, in my view the very existence of the police is necessary because privatizing the activity would lead to way more abuses with zero guarantee of any good results. And there are good reasons for this, since policing is a specialized activity like most others in today's world.

Yes, policing has to be monolithic / standardized, for the sake of procedural enforcement *consistency* -- this is what government is structured to do, since it is *centralized* in a way that the private sector *cannot* attain.

In terms of *reforms*, I call for *full nationalization* of all private sector functioning, as I mentioned above.

Personally, I'd go for the establishment of a system of large conditional transfers. The automation that's already began cannot be used for all existing jobs and it will also generate new ones.

Sorry, but, no, AI technology is not like *conventional* technology -- it is a game-*ender*, since it would allow hobbyist-type people to control *major infrastructure*, as through a web interface, because all subsumed functions would be deskilled and computerized / AI-ized / mechanized, for whoever had (legal) *access* to such.

By 'large conditional transfers' do you mean Main-Street-type bailouts, as we've had from the Trump Administration due to COVID-19?

Society should thus redirect training to that effect, and not just of current workers but of the future ones as well. Furthermore this system would also be a good way for making sure that children are getting the care they need, from vaccination to school attendance and other seemingly basic things we would expect them to get but that some families may not be willing to ensure.

Good point.

I've gone so far in past writings as to call for 'exoskeletons for infants', meaning that we can now technologically obviate the 'nuclear family', in favor of societally granting personal independence and mobility at a *very* young age. The rest of it would be a matter of *social services*, as for anyone else.

The idea is to deal with income inequality, but without having an underclass that becomes dependent on Government aid forever and that doesn't become part of a patronage network with any given political party. The idea of setting conditions is paternalistic (which is odd coming from a moderate liberal guy like I am) but taxpayers have every right to expect their money to be used adequately, and to lead to positive externalities.

Well, 'dependency on government aid forever' to one is 'robust social services' to another.

I'm of the mindset / philosophy that providing the basics to everyone free of charge will *enable* people to address *higher-level* things, instead of wasting most of their waking lives in scrambling to *procure* those basics, at the expense of leading *richer* lives.

I'm not pro-teacher either but I think it's unlikely to happen. There are good developmental reasons for this.

I'm not *anti-teacher*, so the developmental necessities you're noting are fine in my book. I think today's technology, like Wikipedia, simply is more resourceful for the individual, at any age.


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The socialist position does *not* call for the ending of *personal* property, meaning what individuals themselves use, for their personal needs.

Yes, private property -- meaning private control of the means of mass industrial production, primarily -- *is* the main problem in society, because it's what maintains the *class divide*, leaving those who *don't* own private property to be compelled to *sell their labor* for the necessities of life and living, while those who *do* own private property are allowed to *benefit*, by exploiting the labor of those who work to produce commodities, by expropriating surplus labor value from those workers.

I'm all for eliminating the crimes that are based on competition for possession of capital, wealth, and private property of all kinds, by *eliminating* capital, wealth, and private property. The workers of the world can *collectivize* such under their collective control, so as to permanently transcend capitalist commodity relations once and for all.

Ok but theft for example is a crime that deals with personal property, not just private property. That means policing those will still be necessary even under that system.

Yes, agreed, but I don't think that theft or policing will really be required post-capitalism, because people will have ready access to whatever they need, and possibly / eventually for their wants and *desires* as well, all from collectivized social production.


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It's actually *not* a given that laws would be required for a post-capitalist, socialist-type society and its civil society, because the preceding, requisite *proletarian revolution* would do much in the way of setting a *precedent* of social norms for the communist-type society that it ushers-in.

Yes, and this socialist paradise won't require police either.

Are you being *sarcastic*? (I just addressed this issue in the previous segment.)

But by throwing these things away right now, long before any egalitarian society has taken hold, we guarantee that we will never have any of the things you write about.

I *agree* that policing for individual safety and personal property is still required here in class-riven, property-competitive capitalist civil society.

Just like the resilient capitalists in Venezuela, our own corporate masters will sabotage and terrorize the unpoliced population until we are all under martial law while Corporate Strongmen are prepped for a heroic return.

Agreed.

Until the current order has been swept away, the police will be very useful in maintaining some kind of livable society. And for the working class to be constantly threatening the police with poverty and accusastions of being the primary agents of social racism... is to do the work of the 1% who would most certainly like the police to run into their arms.

Hmmmm, I can't agree -- if the *goal* is to *reduce deaths* at the hands of police then that's the issue that has to be addressed, with appropriate policy changes, preferably at the *federal* level so that such is *consistent*, everywhere.

Perhaps it's the *scope* of policing that needs to be discussed, delineated, and clearly redefined, going-forward.

[wat0n]

Okay, body cams is a *reform*, and I'll add that it needs to be *enforced*, because otherwise many cops will just *turn them off*, just as they also are known to cover up their badge numbers.

True, although this is not something that's too hard to deal with. It's as simple as having this to be regarded as interference with discovery and a form of obstruction to justice

Would you like to address the issue of full community *control* over the police hierarchy?

I would need to have more details of how would this community control of the police look like. I suspect though that it can actually lead to greater brutality depending on the character of the community.

For instance, what if the majority of the community is biased against African Americans and it supports tougher policing against them?

Sure, I'm all for policing over people's *personal* property, meaning whatever they themselves *personally*, individually use, but unfortunately bourgeois rule also considers corporations to have the same rights that *people* do, so 'corporate personhood' is obviously a misguided overextension of civil rights to the interests of *capital*.

There's also all of the *financial* corruption that is usually not policed, like offshore accounts for the sake of money laundering and tax evasion (the 'Panama Papers' expose), and the Libor rate-fixing scandal. The state isn't so great at policing these white-collar loopholes -- most major corporations pay *zero* tax.

Sure, although it has little bearing on how would gangs react to a broad drug legalization.

Okay, you're indicating 'redlining' -- good call.

Would you support *full nationalization* of all private infrastructure, including banking? The bailouts are now of a quantity that the state may as well just take them over (so that the public gets its money's worth), to de-privatize and administer such critical economic functions.

No, that kind of stuff tends to fail to deliver.

What I'm mentioning is not redlining either, it goes beyond that. It is a consequence of redlining though.

Okay, I'm not a 'Second Amendment' type, but I don't trust the government to regulate any technology for personal use, and that includes guns. I think it could readily become spurious 'political hay' for the establishment when it's really a political non-issue.

Yeah, and also because an armed population can make up for a good and quick guerrilla force in case of a foreign occupation and also because it puts pressure on the Government to prevent lawlessness.

I mentioned recently that I think the *majority* of civil society is now basically 'multicultural' in its social attitudes, and it's the *government* that is now the overwhelming source of all racism, through its institutional policies like that of allowing redlining and also exonerating killer cops.

Would you consider the recent George Floyd anti-racist protests to be a good example of 'from the wider society itself', and 'from society at large'?

I don't know. I think most Americans do indeed believe George Floyd's killing was unjustified, but that doesn't mean that racism has been purged from the wider society.

Furthermore, the government is at least in part a reflection of wider society. Public officials are in one way or another drawn from it after all.

Oh, *I* don't think so, because whatever kind of hierarchy (of logistics / operations) is used, there would still be some political person *authority* at the apex, who would then be politically accountable to the public in some way. I don't think the bourgeois state would summarily *abolish itself* and turn everything over to a machine AI, despite scurrilous claims of such from certain fearmongerers.

I don't think I said the political establishment would undo itself through automation either. My only point is that the transition involves a political fight at some point.

Sorry, but I'll have to argue this point -- usually the military is *subsumed* under the civilian government apparatus. Today's bonapartism is full-blown since it's out in the open.

I don't know. Is it bonapartism if the military refuses to obey an arguably illegal order from the President?

Yes, policing has to be monolithic / standardized, for the sake of procedural enforcement *consistency* -- this is what government is structured to do, since it is *centralized* in a way that the private sector *cannot* attain.

In terms of *reforms*, I call for *full nationalization* of all private sector functioning, as I mentioned above.

I don't know if standardized is the word, but yes, we don't want local warlords to work on it.

Sorry, but, no, AI technology is not like *conventional* technology -- it is a game-*ender*, since it would allow hobbyist-type people to control *major infrastructure*, as through a web interface, because all subsumed functions would be deskilled and computerized / AI-ized / mechanized, for whoever had (legal) *access* to such.

By 'large conditional transfers' do you mean Main-Street-type bailouts, as we've had from the Trump Administration due to COVID-19?

I wouldn't say AI is such a game changer, although it will indeed bring major changes to society. As for the transfers, yes, but by making it so you only get the money if you fulfill certain conditions.

Good point.

I've gone so far in past writings as to call for 'exoskeletons for infants', meaning that we can now technologically obviate the 'nuclear family', in favor of societally granting personal independence and mobility at a *very* young age. The rest of it would be a matter of *social services*, as for anyone else.

I highly doubt this will happen without severe opposition, as to make it impracticable.

Well, 'dependency on government aid forever' to one is 'robust social services' to another.

I'm of the mindset / philosophy that providing the basics to everyone free of charge will *enable* people to address *higher-level* things, instead of wasting most of their waking lives in scrambling to *procure* those basics, at the expense of leading *richer* lives.

Yes, it's of course arguable. But what if at some point politicians begin to add a few hidden conditions or if they just promise to give stuff they cannot give (due to a lack of resources) as a way to get more votes? That is, old school Latin American populism.

I'm not *anti-teacher*, so the developmental necessities you're noting are fine in my book. I think today's technology, like Wikipedia, simply is more resourceful for the individual, at any age.

Yes, indeed, but the issue here deals with the kid's autonomy.

Yes, agreed, but I don't think that theft or policing will really be required post-capitalism, because people will have ready access to whatever they need, and possibly / eventually for their wants and *desires* as well, all from collectivized social production.

I'm skeptical about these predictions of infinite wealth for everyone. If this were possible, there would be little to no reasons for social conflict, and it would matter little if the system was capitalist or socialist.

I am not that optimistic about the future. People will find needs that they cannot easily fulfill and then the cycle begins all over again.

[ckaihatsu]

True, although this is not something that's too hard to deal with. It's as simple as having this to be regarded as interference with discovery and a form of obstruction to justice

I *guess* -- I don't care much about the logistics / implementation of it, as long as it's sound. Basically there has to be professional disciplinary measures in place for each infraction of a cop turning off the body cam or covering up a badge number.

I would need to have more details of how would this community control of the police look like. I suspect though that it can actually lead to greater brutality depending on the character of the community.

For instance, what if the majority of the community is biased against African Americans and it supports tougher policing against them?

Well, this *isn't* the politics of these police reform movements -- here's one organization:

https://www.caarpr.org/

Sure, although it has little bearing on how would gangs react to a broad drug legalization.

Well, you opined that organized crime would just seek other illicit markets, and I maintain that policing could continue to apply to *personal* property so as to forestall such incursions on people's well-being. The drug trade, though, should *not* be considered as illegal in any way because it's been too problematic that way, with the racist War-on-(some)-Drugs, just like the preceding Prohibition, on alcohol.


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Would you support *full nationalization* of all private infrastructure, including banking? The bailouts are now of a quantity that the state may as well just take them over (so that the public gets its money's worth), to de-privatize and administer such critical economic functions.

No, that kind of stuff tends to fail to deliver.

May I ask what historical *example* / precedent you're thinking of here?

And, to reiterate my point, why should the public provide funding of *trillions* of dollars to the private sector, for financial bailouts, without *gaining* any acquisitions from such?


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Probably, a mix of direct cash transfers and investment in developing those communities. My experience living in Chicago is that there are parts of the city that are clearly underserved compared to the upper middle class neighborhoods - in terms of the volume of economic activity in those neighborhoods, the availability of stores, etc - and this is something their residents are fully aware of.

Okay, you're indicating 'redlining' -- good call.

What I'm mentioning is not redlining either, it goes beyond that. It is a consequence of redlining though.

It *is* redlining:

In the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, purposely locating stores impractically far away from targeted residents results in a redlining effect.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

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Yeah, and also because an armed population can make up for a good and quick guerrilla force in case of a foreign occupation and also because it puts pressure on the Government to prevent lawlessness.

Okay, if you like (I'm not in *exact* agreement on these nationalist-minded details).


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I mentioned recently that I think the *majority* of civil society is now basically 'multicultural' in its social attitudes, and it's the *government* that is now the overwhelming source of all racism, through its institutional policies like that of allowing redlining and also exonerating killer cops.

Would you consider the recent George Floyd anti-racist protests to be a good example of 'from the wider society itself', and 'from society at large'?

I don't know. I think most Americans do indeed believe George Floyd's killing was unjustified, but that doesn't mean that racism has been purged from the wider society.

Furthermore, the government is at least in part a reflection of wider society. Public officials are in one way or another drawn from it after all.

Agreed that racist attitudes have not *entirely* disappeared.

I can't agree that the government movers-and-shakers accurately reflect popular political will -- I think the state, being bureaucratically-elitist, has a life of its own, and mostly *functions* that way, meaning overwhelmingly in the interests of the wealthy, or 'ruling class'.

Would you like to address the question of the *protests* reflecting the popular will?


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I don't think I said the political establishment would undo itself through automation either. My only point is that the transition involves a political fight at some point.

I *suppose* so, if the public wants to *politicize* the issue of AI implementations within government operations. I'm sure the state would just do so *summarily*, though, as an 'internal' matter, if it wanted to, with such a decision being exposed *after the fact* by journalism / the public.

I don't know. Is it bonapartism if the military refuses to obey an arguably illegal order from the President?

It wasn't just that, though -- if I recall correctly the military brass also refused to invade Iran, against Trump's behest.

There's also the Deep State thing:

In The Concealment of the State, Professor Jason Royce Lindsey argues that even without a conspiratorial agenda, the term deep state is useful for understanding aspects of the national security establishment in developed countries, with emphasis on the United States. Lindsey writes that the deep state draws power from the national security and intelligence communities, a realm where secrecy is a source of power.[15]:35–36 Alfred W. McCoy states that the increase in the power of the U.S. intelligence community since the September 11 attacks "has built a fourth branch of the U.S. government" that is "in many ways autonomous from the executive, and increasingly so."[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_stat ... ted_States

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I don't know if standardized is the word, but yes, we don't want local warlords to work on it.

Okay.

I'll add that this is why I'm so politically *critical* of any left-wing or far-left-wing notions of *decentralization* in approach, because of this unavoidable empirical dynamic.


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show

Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

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I wouldn't say AI is such a game changer, although it will indeed bring major changes to society.

All it takes is for someone to do the legwork of 'training' an AI system over any particular *subject area*, or real-world implementation, like playing chess or driving a truck. The more-accurate term is 'expert system'.

As for the transfers, yes, but by making it so you only get the money if you fulfill certain conditions.

So instead of providing government social services to people on the basis of *human need*, you'd rather have government *moralizing* and rule-based, *institutional* moralism -- alongside the *unconditional* bailing-out of Wall Street and its bad-debt-ridden balance sheets.

I highly doubt this will happen without severe opposition, as to make it impracticable.

Well, maybe as with the issue of institutional racist police violence and killings, the public may need to re-examine how *society itself* should be structured -- does it help to have an antiquated, genetics-based social practice of nuclear-family upbringing, or should we 'liberate' individuals as early as possible and provide for them on a *collective* basis instead? Which approach is more empowering for the individual in our modern society?

Yes, it's of course arguable. But what if at some point politicians begin to add a few hidden conditions or if they just promise to give stuff they cannot give (due to a lack of resources) as a way to get more votes? That is, old school Latin American populism.

Sure, you're talking about typical *patronage* networks, which is the *norm* under capitalist / bourgeois government.

This fact only feeds-into arguments for *overthrowing* capitalist political power relations, once and for all, in favor of collective *workers* mass co-administration over all social production.


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I'm not *anti-teacher*, so the developmental necessities you're noting are fine in my book. I think today's technology, like Wikipedia, simply is more resourceful for the individual, at any age.

Yes, indeed, but the issue here deals with the kid's autonomy.

You're being *vague*. What point do you want to make here?

I'm skeptical about these predictions of infinite wealth for everyone. If this were possible, there would be little to no reasons for social conflict, and it would matter little if the system was capitalist or socialist.

But you're glossing-over the respective *structures* of each kind of social order -- under capitalism it's all about *private accumulations*, as in offshore accounts, or 'private infinities', if-you-will, while workers-of-the-world socialism would all be about *collectivizing* the fruits of all collective efforts, to individual human needs and requirements. Quite different.

I am not that optimistic about the future.

Sorry to hear it. Thanks for your *time*, regardless.

People will find needs that they cannot easily fulfill and then the cycle begins all over again.

Good.

I would argue that *this* is the human condition, and is the reason for the prerequisite of socialism's collectivization.

[wat0n]

I *guess* -- I don't care much about the logistics / implementation of it, as long as it's sound. Basically there has to be professional disciplinary measures in place for each infraction of a cop turning off the body cam or covering up a badge number.

There should, but it should go beyond that. Having unjustifiably turned your bodycam off in a case of brutality should be presumption of guilt in a trial.

Well, this *isn't* the politics of these police reform movements -- here's one organization:

https://www.caarpr.org/

Yes, it isn't the politics of the current reform movements, but the issue is not their politics but those of the communities that would exert control over their police forces.

Well, you opined that organized crime would just seek other illicit markets, and I maintain that policing could continue to apply to *personal* property so as to forestall such incursions on people's well-being. The drug trade, though, should *not* be considered as illegal in any way because it's been too problematic that way, with the racist War-on-(some)-Drugs, just like the preceding Prohibition, on alcohol.

Sure. I don't think it's clear the WoD is inherently racist, though, but either way it's time to end it.

May I ask what historical *example* / precedent you're thinking of here?

See the Cold War

And, to reiterate my point, why should the public provide funding of *trillions* of dollars to the private sector, for financial bailouts, without *gaining* any acquisitions from such?

It depends on the case, but yeah, I don't mind nationalizing a company in the context of a bailout. But in no event this is the same as nationalization of all private property.

It *is* redlining:

It's, as implied, a redlining effect - not the actual redlining in which banks would refuse loans based on race.

There are non race-based reasons for the lower commercial activity in those neighborhoods. For instance, crime itself can actually depress commercial activity.

Okay, if you like (I'm not in *exact* agreement on these nationalist-minded details).

No worries, but it is an example with historical relevance.

Agreed that racist attitudes have not *entirely* disappeared.

I can't agree that the government movers-and-shakers accurately reflect popular political will -- I think the state, being bureaucratically-elitist, has a life of its own, and mostly *functions* that way, meaning overwhelmingly in the interests of the wealthy, or 'ruling class'.

No, I don't necessarily mean that it reflects political will. But some Government officials individually make decisions that may affect people if a given race, and they may or may not be influenced by a prior bias on the matter.

Would you like to address the question of the *protests* reflecting the popular will?

I think some aspects of them do, others don't. Increasingly, they don't.

I *suppose* so, if the public wants to *politicize* the issue of AI implementations within government operations. I'm sure the state would just do so *summarily*, though, as an 'internal' matter, if it wanted to, with such a decision being exposed *after the fact* by journalism / the public.

It's possible. It's also possible workers negatively impacted by it would strike, thereby politicizing the issue.

It wasn't just that, though -- if I recall correctly the military brass also refused to invade Iran, against Trump's behest.

I think it adviced against it, but that's not the same as refusing to comply with an order.

There's also the Deep State thing:

That goes well beyond the military, however. Civilian Government officials are also part of it, and are indeed a constituency in their own right.

So instead of providing government social services to people on the basis of *human need*, you'd rather have government *moralizing* and rule-based, *institutional* moralism -- alongside the *unconditional* bailing-out of Wall Street and its bad-debt-ridden balance sheets.

Basing services purely on need, however, is also a moral decision. However, I don't think I'm proposing moralizing social security - just that we need to provide incentives for people to invest on their own human capital, to stay healthy, to comply with the law, etc. It's also important since whatever you do has a moral dimension, and I also think taxpayers have a right to expect that their money will be used in the best possible way.

Well, maybe as with the issue of institutional racist police violence and killings, the public may need to re-examine how *society itself* should be structured -- does it help to have an antiquated, genetics-based social practice of nuclear-family upbringing, or should we 'liberate' individuals as early as possible and provide for them on a *collective* basis instead? Which approach is more empowering for the individual in our modern society?

It's a good question, but I don't see something as fundamental as family upbringing being questioned in my lifetime.

Sure, you're talking about typical *patronage* networks, which is the *norm* under capitalist / bourgeois government.

This fact only feeds-into arguments for *overthrowing* capitalist political power relations, once and for all, in favor of collective *workers* mass co-administration over all social production.

That can and does happen outside capitalism.

You're being *vague*. What point do you want to make here?

A 7 year old kid is not generally mature enough to understand he needs to study on his own.

But you're glossing-over the respective *structures* of each kind of social order -- under capitalism it's all about *private accumulations*, as in offshore accounts, or 'private infinities', if-you-will, while workers-of-the-world socialism would all be about *collectivizing* the fruits of all collective efforts, to individual human needs and requirements. Quite different.

I don't see how socialism ever fixed that issue. You know, if capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, socialism is just the other way around!

Good.

I would argue that *this* is the human condition, and is the reason for the prerequisite of socialism's collectivization.

I would say it's the other way around, the human condition needs to change for collectivization to have a chance to work.

[ckaihatsu]

There should, but it should go beyond that. Having unjustifiably turned your bodycam off in a case of brutality should be presumption of guilt in a trial.

Okay, no prob here with that.

Yes, it isn't the politics of the current reform movements, but the issue is not their politics but those of the communities that would exert control over their police forces.

Skeptical, huh? Well, this organization is currently at the vanguard of things, so it's the protest movement's 'status quo', so-to-speak.

Sure. I don't think it's clear the WoD is inherently racist, though, but either way it's time to end it.

The War on Drugs is a term for the actions taken and legislation enacted by the United States government, intended to reduce or eliminate the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs. The War on Drugs began during the Nixon administration with the goal of reducing the supply of and demand for illegal drugs, though an ulterior, racial motivation has been proposed.[1] The War on Drugs has led to controversial legislation and policies, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches, which have been suggested to be carried out disproportionately against minorities.[2][3] The effects of the War on Drugs are contentious, with some suggesting that it has created racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment and rehabilitation.[4][5] Others have criticized the methodology and conclusions of such studies.[6] In addition to enforcement disparities, some claim that the collateral effects of the War on Drugs have established forms of structural violence, especially for minority communities.[7][8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs

---

Would you support *full nationalization* of all private infrastructure, including banking? The bailouts are now of a quantity that the state may as well just take them over (so that the public gets its money's worth), to de-privatize and administer such critical economic functions.

No, that kind of stuff tends to fail to deliver.

May I ask what historical *example* / precedent you're thinking of here?

See the Cold War

So in the context of geopolitical brinksmanship between the two superpowers, what 'nationalization' of the private sector took place?

Shouldn't the trillions in public funds spent by Trump yield *something* tangible back to the public, like perhaps the nationalization of major companies that are receiving these funds? Ditto for the 2008-2009 bailout.

And why are you so positive about the *private sector*? What do you think is so "good" about it?

It depends on the case, but yeah, I don't mind nationalizing a company in the context of a bailout. But in no event this is the same as nationalization of all private property.

Okay -- and, fortunately, I have a list ready (grin).

• $67.8 billion to purchase preferred shares of American International Group (AIG), then among the top 10 US companies, through the program for Systemically Significant Failing Institutions;

• $79.7 billion in loans and capital injections to automakers and their financing arms through the Automotive Industry Financing Program.

• $21.9 billion to buy "toxic" mortgage-related securities.

Participants

See also: Supervisory Capital Assessment Program

The banks agreeing to receive preferred stock investments from the Treasury include Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. (which had just agreed to purchase Merrill Lynch), Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of New York Mellon and State Street Corp.[41][42][43] The Bank of New York Mellon is to serve as master custodian overseeing the fund.[44]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_ ... ef_Program

---

It's, as implied, a redlining effect - not the actual redlining in which banks would refuse loans based on race.

There are non race-based reasons for the lower commercial activity in those neighborhoods. For instance, crime itself can actually depress commercial activity.

Okay, and what do you *think* about this redlining *effect*?

No worries, but it is an example with historical relevance.

No, I don't necessarily mean that it reflects political will. But some Government officials individually make decisions that may affect people if a given race, and they may or may not be influenced by a prior bias on the matter.

I think some aspects of them do, others don't. Increasingly, they don't.

It's possible. It's also possible workers negatively impacted by it [AI] would strike, thereby politicizing the issue.

Okay.

I think it adviced against it, but that's not the same as refusing to comply with an order.

Okay.

Here's what I was thinking of, and it conforms to the separation of powers / branches of government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassina ... war_powers

That goes well beyond the military, however. Civilian Government officials are also part of it [the Deep State], and are indeed a constituency in their own right.

Okay, so would this be considered as bonapartism, or not, do you think? (I don't know.)


---

So instead of providing government social services to people on the basis of *human need*, you'd rather have government *moralizing* and rule-based, *institutional* moralism -- alongside the *unconditional* bailing-out of Wall Street and its bad-debt-ridden balance sheets.

Basing services purely on need, however, is also a moral decision. However, I don't think I'm proposing moralizing social security - just that we need to provide incentives for people to invest on their own human capital, to stay healthy, to comply with the law, etc. It's also important since whatever you do has a moral dimension, and I also think taxpayers have a right to expect that their money will be used in the best possible way.

Well, one could easily say that your approach happens to be too *individualistic*-based, and would thus be a massive duplication-of-effort (on the part of separate individuals), when instead a more *centralized*, *governmental* approach would benefit from economies of scale, like the proposed 'Medicare For All' kind of reform (single-payer government administration).

Remember *this* political sentiment that you expressed -- ? (Certain sectors of the political economy *need* to be centralized / standardized, like policing methods, and, I would argue, social services like health care and Social Security as well.) (With this kind of 'social safety net' in place people would still have wide latitudes of freedom to live their lives as they like, at 'higher' levels of social involvement and productivity.)

Yes, policing has to be monolithic / standardized, for the sake of procedural enforcement *consistency* -- this is what government is structured to do, since it is *centralized* in a way that the private sector *cannot* attain.

In terms of *reforms*, I call for *full nationalization* of all private sector functioning, as I mentioned above.

I don't know if standardized is the word, but yes, we don't want local warlords to work on it.

---

It's a good question, but I don't see something as fundamental as family upbringing being questioned in my lifetime.

And yet that's exactly what I *just* did. Boo-yah.


---

Sure, you're talking about typical *patronage* networks, which is the *norm* under capitalist / bourgeois government.

This fact only feeds-into arguments for *overthrowing* capitalist political power relations, once and for all, in favor of collective *workers* mass co-administration over all social production.

That can and does happen outside capitalism.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here -- if you mean *patronage networks* I would argue, as I stated, that such are the *norm* within bourgeois capitalism.

In other words political patronage is effectively *political* commodification, meaning that one will submit to saying a certain political line in return for the material favors of the patron / benefactor. It's a *socio-material* exchange, so it's political-economics, for lack of a better term.

A 7 year old kid is not generally mature enough to understand he needs to study on his own.

No, but like *any* of us, one can simply delve into what is *interesting* to oneself -- that's all it takes to be off-and-running.


---

But you're glossing-over the respective *structures* of each kind of social order -- under capitalism it's all about *private accumulations*, as in offshore accounts, or 'private infinities', if-you-will, while workers-of-the-world socialism would all be about *collectivizing* the fruits of all collective efforts, to individual human needs and requirements. Quite different.

I don't see how socialism ever fixed that issue. You know, if capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, socialism is just the other way around!

Wow -- reaching new depths in *cynicism*, huh?

Recall that the historical 'socialism' you're referring to here was actually nation-state-circumscribed *Stalinism*, which is certainly *not* Communist-Manifesto, *workers-of-the-world* socialism.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show

---

People will find needs that they cannot easily fulfill and then the cycle begins all over again.

Good.

I would argue that *this* is the human condition, and is the reason for the prerequisite of socialism's collectivization.

I would say it's the other way around, the human condition needs to change for collectivization to have a chance to work.

Please keep in mind that, contrary to the stereotype, workers-of-the-world socialism does *not* require some kind of individual-soul-melting, totalitarian '1984'-type Stalinist state.

Post-capitalist, collectivist-type socialism refers primarily to societal control of *the means of mass industrial production*, which is currently in *private* hands, for *private* profit-making, under capitalism.

There's nothing to suggest *any* mitigation of individual self-determination / individuality, after the overthrow of bourgeois ruling-class rule -- in fact I would argue that individuality would *benefit*, and *increase* as a result of not having to conform to capitalist *commodity* relations any longer.

Self-interest would remain alive and well, echoing your 'People will find needs that they cannot easily fulfill and then the cycle begins all over again' statement. It's a rather good description, actually, as I previously affirmed.


‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

(Also see the 'leftwards' aspect in the following diagram.)


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show

[wat0n]

Skeptical, huh? Well, this organization is currently at the vanguard of things, so it's the protest movement's 'status quo', so-to-speak.

I'm thinking beyond the current BLM protests. Political sentiments can change

As for the WoD the article itself says it's a rather controversial issue. I think it's one of those things that affects African Americans more but that is not there with that in mind.

So in the context of geopolitical brinksmanship between the two superpowers, what 'nationalization' of the private sector took place?

Shouldn't the trillions in public funds spent by Trump yield *something* tangible back to the public, like perhaps the nationalization of major companies that are receiving these funds? Ditto for the 2008-2009 bailout.

And why are you so positive about the *private sector*? What do you think is so "good" about it?

Allow me to be more specific: See the collapse of communism.

Okay -- and, fortunately, I have a list ready (grin).

Indeed, those where nationalized and then the Government made a gain when reprivatizing them.

Okay, and what do you *think* about this redlining *effect*?

I need it ought to be addressed as part of urban development policies.

Okay.

Here's what I was thinking of, and it conforms to the separation of powers / branches of government:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassina ... war_powers

Yeah, although a resolution is no Act of Congress.

Okay, so would this be considered as bonapartism, or not, do you think? (I don't know.)

Nope, it's just the interest groups that are inherent to any State.

Well, one could easily say that your approach happens to be too *individualistic*-based, and would thus be a massive duplication-of-effort (on the part of separate individuals), when instead a more *centralized*, *governmental* approach would benefit from economies of scale, like the proposed 'Medicare For All' kind of reform (single-payer government administration).

Remember *this* political sentiment that you expressed -- ? (Certain sectors of the political economy *need* to be centralized / standardized, like policing methods, and, I would argue, social services like health care and Social Security as well.) (With this kind of 'social safety net' in place people would still have wide latitudes of freedom to live their lives as they like, at 'higher' levels of social involvement and productivity.)

Maybe, I'm actually not sure about the healthcare issue. However I don't think Americans in general are willing to fund Medicare for All - because as I assume you know, nothing's free and this will require a major tax hike across the board.

And yet that's exactly what I *just* did. Boo-yah.

Yeah, but by a movement like the current one

I'm not sure what you're referring to here -- if you mean *patronage networks* I would argue, as I stated, that such are the *norm* within bourgeois capitalism.

In other words political patronage is effectively *political* commodification, meaning that one will submit to saying a certain political line in return for the material favors of the patron / benefactor. It's a *socio-material* exchange, so it's political-economics, for lack of a better term.

Yes, I meant patronage. It also happened in Communist economies.

No, but like *any* of us, one can simply delve into what is *interesting* to oneself -- that's all it takes to be off-and-running.

Right, but 7-year olds are too young to do so at that age. At least in a serious manner, and to be able to properly understand the information on their own.

Wow -- reaching new depths in *cynicism*, huh?

Recall that the historical 'socialism' you're referring to here was actually nation-state-circumscribed *Stalinism*, which is certainly *not* Communist-Manifesto, *workers-of-the-world* socialism.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

Spoiler: show

Absolutely, the true Scotsman doesn't exist.

Please keep in mind that, contrary to the stereotype, workers-of-the-world socialism does *not* require some kind of individual-soul-melting, totalitarian '1984'-type Stalinist state.

Post-capitalist, collectivist-type socialism refers primarily to societal control of *the means of mass industrial production*, which is currently in *private* hands, for *private* profit-making, under capitalism.

There's nothing to suggest *any* mitigation of individual self-determination / individuality, after the overthrow of bourgeois ruling-class rule -- in fact I would argue that individuality would *benefit*, and *increase* as a result of not having to conform to capitalist *commodity* relations any longer.

Self-interest would remain alive and well, echoing your 'People will find needs that they cannot easily fulfill and then the cycle begins all over again' statement. It's a rather good description, actually, as I previously affirmed.


‭History, Macro-Micro -- politics-logistics-lifestyle

Spoiler: show

(Also see the 'leftwards' aspect in the following diagram.)


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show

It's not just individuality though. It requires a great amount of solidarity and willingness to leave your own interests aside, to the point of being willing to work really hard for the community, with potentially no better reward than those who don't do much get. This is not something most people are willing to do.

[ckaihatsu]

I'm thinking beyond the current BLM protests. Political sentiments can change

You're *still* unable or unwilling to address the issue of *community control* of policing.

As for the WoD the article itself says it's a rather controversial issue. I think it's one of those things that affects African Americans more but that is not there with that in mind.

*Of course* the WosD affects blacks more, that's why the WosD is racist and why it, along with the 'War on Terror' needs to put to the garbage heap.


---

Would you support *full nationalization* of all private infrastructure, including banking? The bailouts are now of a quantity that the state may as well just take them over (so that the public gets its money's worth), to de-privatize and administer such critical economic functions.

No, that kind of stuff tends to fail to deliver.

May I ask what historical *example* / precedent you're thinking of here?

See the Cold War

So in the context of geopolitical brinksmanship between the two superpowers, what 'nationalization' of the private sector took place?

Shouldn't the trillions in public funds spent by Trump yield *something* tangible back to the public, like perhaps the nationalization of major companies that are receiving these funds? Ditto for the 2008-2009 bailout.

And why are you so positive about the *private sector*? What do you think is so "good" about it?

Allow me to be more specific: See the collapse of communism.

You're being *vague*, and you're not addressing the issue of *nationalization* of the private sector, in proportion to the quantity of money (trillions of dollars) being used to *bail out* the private sector.

Indeed, those where nationalized and then the Government made a gain when reprivatizing them.

You're saying that the private sector paid *interest* to the government on TARP loans? Where's your evidence for this contention?


---

Okay, and what do you *think* about this redlining *effect*?

I need it ought to be addressed as part of urban development policies.

Or should it be stopped *immediately*, along with racist killer cops?

Yeah, although a resolution is no Act of Congress.

---

That goes well beyond the military, however. Civilian Government officials are also part of it [the Deep State], and are indeed a constituency in their own right.

Okay, so would this be considered as bonapartism, or not, do you think? (I don't know.)

Nope, it's just the interest groups that are inherent to any State.

You're only describing the 'deep state' *empirically*, but not *politically* -- the current government overreliance on its military and the deep state means that *functionally* the executive branch is *overextended* and therefore necessarily politicized and bonapartist.

Maybe, I'm actually not sure about the healthcare issue. However I don't think Americans in general are willing to fund Medicare for All - because as I assume you know, nothing's free and this will require a major tax hike across the board.

The *military* is 'free', though we don't get to control it. Tax breaks for the rich are *free* to the rich, and so are bailouts of the private sector.

You're really sounding more and more like an establishment *hack*, with your defense of the status quo, particularly for the right-wing of government expenditures.

Yeah, but by a movement like the current one

Yes, I meant patronage. It also happened in Communist economies.

Yes, the *Stalinist* countries. Instead of *economic* commodification they primarily used *political* commodification, as is done by *corporations*. I recently wrote a *treatment* of this topic of *syndicalism*, at another thread:

State capitalism / Stalinism *constantly* ran into exchange-valuation problems, and still does, as with Venezuela, because it attempts to *carve out* a mainly locally-*circumscribed* economy, out of the larger global sea of capitalism. By doing so it becomes *difficult* to establish politically-*commanded* currency exchange rates with other / major capitalist currencies, and also suffers from lack of global popular acceptance of its *own* domestic currency because the country is certainly not king-of-the-hill in the global geopolitical context, and is probably also anti-imperialist, or at least geopolitically *independent*. So its currency suffers from inflation, with high black-market exchange rates with major capitalist currencies.

The political *point* of all of this iconoclasm, though, is that the domestic / internal economy for that country *could* be much smoother, internally, similarly to the way any private *corporation* is structured internally, with a *bureaucratization* ('politicization') of internal material movements, so as to generally avoid interfacing with external market exchanges as much as possible.

As long as a political-type pyramid-shaped *hierarchy* can be maintained, all internal economic transfers are tacitly accepted by all, internally (and even externally), and thus no longer require (two-way) *exchanges* for any given transfer. (A manager could readily requisition *materials* for an approved project, from any other division, without necessarily having to 'pay', in cash, in a market-type *exchange*, since the approved project is under an *authority*, the manager's boss.)

This is also the structure and functioning of any kind of *syndicalism*, btw, as in the military, or with a locally collectivized enterprise like a workers co-op. By internally eliminating *exchange values* that entire 'middle layer' of valuated exchanges can be bypassed altogether, in favor of enterprise-defined *use values*, as *qualitatively* defined by managerial *authorities*, with *internal politics* providing flexibility and fluidity, going-forward.

This is the way that *abundance*, particularly, can be handled, so as to get around capitalism's inherent dynamic of 'enforced scarcity', usually through the destructive function of *warfare*, over anything that becomes *overproduced*. (The present-day is notably *different*, with popularly disallowed warfare, so *that* conventionally economically destructive function is now *forestalled*, which is an interesting development in and of itself.)

True workers-of-the-world socialism would just be an *expansion* of this basic corporate-like / Stalinist-state-like bureaucratic functioning, but it would better correspond to actual realities / facts, because the overall 'pyramid' (of relative individual social prestige, or reputation) would be much *flatter* than we're used to seeing, historically, due to historical *caste*-like bureaucratic *elitism*, or *top-down* administration of the workers themselves.

In the absence of caste / class / careerism / heredity / elitism, the 'base' of the 'pyramid' would be much, much *broader*, to enable a broad-based *bottom-up* dynamic of dynamic social planning, with far less institutional *rigidity*, if at all.

viewtopic.php?p=15095654#p15095654

---

Right, but 7-year olds are too young to do so at that age. At least in a serious manner, and to be able to properly understand the information on their own.

Hmmmm, that sounds rather *insulting* to 7-year-olds. I think what you're describing has more to do with an individual's *attitude*, than anything else, though, yes, socialization plays a role.

Absolutely, the true Scotsman doesn't exist.

No, this isn't a matter of semantic or legalistic wrangling -- Stalinism is *not* workers-of-the-world socialism. We could define *both*, and put them side-by-side, and anyone would readily see the difference. That's what that 'Political Spectrum, Simplified' chart is about.

It's not just individuality though. It requires a great amount of solidarity and willingness to leave your own interests aside, to the point of being willing to work really hard for the community, with potentially no better reward than those who don't do much get. This is not something most people are willing to do.

Oh, I get it -- you're using the 'community' / communitarian formulation, instead of workers-of-the-world socialism.

There *are* a lot of 'community' types out there, but that's not how socialism is to be comprised -- it's all active workers, at the machinery, in their workplaces, and *controlling* those implements for their *own* collective benefit instead of making commodities for the employer. Given enough abundance those liberated products could then be direct-distributed to the surrounding area and beyond, based on organic human need for such goods and services.

The reward is that those liberated workers would have 'first dibs' to what they themselves produce, and then also among workers seized-workplaces / collectives, on an 'internal' basis.

This is exactly what my 'global syndicalist currency' framework addresses:


viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857

[wat0n]

You're *still* unable or unwilling to address the issue of *community control* of policing.

I think I did: If communities' views on race take a turn for the worst, policing could become racist as a result.

*Of course* the WosD affects blacks more, that's why the WosD is racist and why it, along with the 'War on Terror' needs to put to the garbage heap.

That's not a reason for it to be racist, however. For instance, African Americans are overrepresented among the poor as well, yet I would not describe the War on Poverty as being an example of an antirracist policy.

You're being *vague*, and you're not addressing the issue of *nationalization* of the private sector, in proportion to the quantity of money (trillions of dollars) being used to *bail out* the private sector.

What is it there to be addressed? Nationalizing the economy has shown to fail, and there are good reasons for that.

You're saying that the private sector paid *interest* to the government on TARP loans? Where's your evidence for this contention?

https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

Or should it be stopped *immediately*, along with racist killer cops?

There's no such a thing as "immediately" when it comes to urban planning however. Whatever you do is something that will necessarily take a while to materialize.

You're only describing the 'deep state' *empirically*, but not *politically* -- the current government overreliance on its military and the deep state means that *functionally* the executive branch is *overextended* and therefore necessarily politicized and bonapartist.

That's because we don't understand the deep state in the same way. I see it as an inevitably constituent part of any State.

The *military* is 'free', though we don't get to control it. Tax breaks for the rich are *free* to the rich, and so are bailouts of the private sector.

You're really sounding more and more like an establishment *hack*, with your defense of the status quo, particularly for the right-wing of government expenditures.

The military is not "free". Soldiers don't work for free, contractors don't work for free and the hardware isn't free for the government either. And if the government pays, then the taxpayers pay.

Yes, the *Stalinist* countries. Instead of *economic* commodification they primarily used *political* commodification, as is done by *corporations*. I recently wrote a *treatment* of this topic of *syndicalism*, at another thread:

It wasn't purely political though.

Hmmmm, that sounds rather *insulting* to 7-year-olds. I think what you're describing has more to do with an individual's *attitude*, than anything else, though, yes, socialization plays a role.

You may find some who are way off the norm, but you can't expect it to be viable for the majority of 7 year olds.

No, this isn't a matter of semantic or legalistic wrangling -- Stalinism is *not* workers-of-the-world socialism. We could define *both*, and put them side-by-side, and anyone would readily see the difference. That's what that 'Political Spectrum, Simplified' chart is about.

Ok but then if you don't want to consider all the self-declared socialist states as such, socialism hasn't been ever proven and thereby there is not reason to guarantee anything with regards to it.

Oh, I get it -- you're using the 'community' / communitarian formulation, instead of workers-of-the-world socialism.

There *are* a lot of 'community' types out there, but that's not how socialism is to be comprised -- it's all active workers, at the machinery, in their workplaces, and *controlling* those implements for their *own* collective benefit instead of making commodities for the employer. Given enough abundance those liberated products could then be direct-distributed to the surrounding area and beyond, based on organic human need for such goods and services.

The reward is that those liberated workers would have 'first dibs' to what they themselves produce, and then also among workers seized-workplaces / collectives, on an 'internal' basis.

This is exactly what my 'global syndicalist currency' framework addresses:


viewtopic.php?f=16&t=174857

What percentage of the production would be kept by each individual worker in the first instance? Does it even make sense to think about this in industrial or manufacturing terms with the impending automation process?

[ckaihatsu]

I think I did: If communities' views on race take a turn for the worst, policing could become racist as a result.

This is a *future hypothetical*, though -- given prevailing conditions what do you think should be done *now* regarding community control over policing?

That's not a reason for it to be racist, however. For instance, African Americans are overrepresented among the poor as well, yet I would not describe the War on Poverty as being an example of an antirracist policy.

Well, the War on Poverty *was* an anti-racist program until LBJ got on board the Vietnam War bandwagon, abandoning it.

You're *intellectualizing* instead of being *political* and *saying* whether you think the WosD is racist or not.

What is it there to be addressed? Nationalizing the economy has shown to fail, and there are good reasons for that.

You still haven't provided any historical *examples* to back up your contention. Mere opinionating won't get you very far in the *political* arena. And you're still not speaking to what the public should get for its trillions handed over to Wall Street.

https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/

Okay, thanks, good to know.


---

Okay, and what do you *think* about this redlining *effect*?

I need it ought to be addressed as part of urban development policies.

Or should it be stopped *immediately*, along with racist killer cops?

There's no such a thing as "immediately" when it comes to urban planning however. Whatever you do is something that will necessarily take a while to materialize.

Well, this is a *logistical* treatment, but I'm here for the *politics* -- if known social ills like redlining and racist killer cops can't be addressed *immediately* then that means the prevailing system *condones* redlining and racist killer cops, at least for the time being, and it's *been* decades and centuries *already*.

That's because we don't understand the deep state in the same way. I see it as an inevitably constituent part of any State.

Okay, but you're not dealing with it as it exists *today*, characterized as a 'fourth' branch of government that's prevailing over policy and even the definition of what (U.S.) government *is*. If this description is accurate, and I think it is, then, yes, this *is* a constitutional crisis and an existential threat for the U.S.

The military is not "free". Soldiers don't work for free, contractors don't work for free and the hardware isn't free for the government either. And if the government pays, then the taxpayers pay.

Sorry, I meant *politically* free, meaning that its funding is by far the U.S.' greatest expense and it overrides any kind of public oversight or accountability. It could be better termed a militaristic *technocracy*, more than anything else.

It wasn't purely political though.

The *administration* / management of the USSR *was* virtually purely political since Stalin went to the extent of *purges* of his suspected political rivals -- it doesn't get more political than the practice of mass assassinations.

You may find some who are way off the norm, but you can't expect it to be viable for the majority of 7 year olds.

Again, I'm *not* recommending dispensing with teachers and public schooling, in favor of Wikipedia alone. I consider online learning tools to be valuable *resources* to the individual.

Ok but then if you don't want to consider all the self-declared socialist states as such, socialism hasn't been ever proven and thereby there is not reason to guarantee anything with regards to it.

Hey, I didn't *make* the world -- I only got here a few decades ago, and anyone can tell you that there's a distinct difference between *nationalist*, versus *internationalist*. You can do the math yourself to find out which is which.

What percentage of the production would be kept by each individual worker in the first instance? Does it even make sense to think about this in industrial or manufacturing terms with the impending automation process?

Well, *I* think so, and that's why I've gone to the trouble of creating a *framework* for this process that you're indicating:


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


As I already said, the priority for consumption would be with the liberated-producers themselves, individually and collectively, in that order. You seem to think that the full-automation transition would be *automatic*, but, no, that isn't the case, because it's *workers* who would have to decide and then 'press the button' to initiate whatever directions in technological implementation.


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

[wat0n]

This is a *future hypothetical*, though -- given prevailing conditions what do you think should be done *now* regarding community control over policing?

It's an important hypothetical, though. That's where the division of powers comes from - by thinking about the future hypotheticals. I think more community participation is indeed necessary either way, but I wouldn't be as idealistic as to believe that's a silver bullet.

And to do that, there should probably more participation in local elections, to start with.

Well, the War on Poverty *was* an anti-racist program until LBJ got on board the Vietnam War bandwagon, abandoning it.

You're *intellectualizing* instead of being *political* and *saying* whether you think the WosD is racist or not.

I wouldn't describe the WoP as inherently antirracist, and I don't think that's inherent to the WoD either. I think the latter was driven by the same Puritan and public health concerns that fueled the Prohibition. And the latter aren't baseless, but it turns out ending drug addiction by force is easier said than done, and has many unintended consequences.

You still haven't provided any historical *examples* to back up your contention. Mere opinionating won't get you very far in the *political* arena. And you're still not speaking to what the public should get for its trillions handed over to Wall Street.

The public did get its money back from the bailout. As for nationalization, what else should I say? We know it didn't work as the Soviet Bloc was a failure.

Okay, thanks, good to know.

Facts are great, aren't they?

Well, this is a *logistical* treatment, but I'm here for the *politics* -- if known social ills like redlining and racist killer cops can't be addressed *immediately* then that means the prevailing system *condones* redlining and racist killer cops, at least for the time being, and it's *been* decades and centuries *already*.

It may be a logistical treatment, but is what I said false? Politics needs to be grounded in the real world, not just be a declaration of principles that has no relation to the reality we live in. One that of course includes the persistent ills caused by bad past policy, and also the persistent benefits brought by good past policy depending on the case (redlining being one that only has caused ills however).

Okay, but you're not dealing with it as it exists *today*, characterized as a 'fourth' branch of government that's prevailing over policy and even the definition of what (U.S.) government *is*. If this description is accurate, and I think it is, then, yes, this *is* a constitutional crisis and an existential threat for the U.S.

I wouldn't say it's existential in nature, but as I said it's part of any functioning State. And the reason for that is simple: Government jobs, like many others, are specialized activities, which means Government officials are not easy to replace.

Particularly not career ones that also happen to fulfill essential functions in any modern society.

Sorry, I meant *politically* free, meaning that its funding is by far the U.S.' greatest expense and it overrides any kind of public oversight or accountability. It could be better termed a militaristic *technocracy*, more than anything else.

That's not true either, though. Social security, and then healthcare, represent almost half of Federal expenses.

Defense is around 15% of Federal expenses.

The *administration* / management of the USSR *was* virtually purely political since Stalin went to the extent of *purges* of his suspected political rivals -- it doesn't get more political than the practice of mass assassinations.

Correct, and this has an economic angle. You don't think he just used brutality to sustain his regime, do you?

Again, I'm *not* recommending dispensing with teachers and public schooling, in favor of Wikipedia alone. I consider online learning tools to be valuable *resources* to the individual.

No disagreement with this idea.

Hey, I didn't *make* the world -- I only got here a few decades ago, and anyone can tell you that there's a distinct difference between *nationalist*, versus *internationalist*. You can do the math yourself to find out which is which.

Well, that's also hard to figure out in practice. Internationalists have shown a rather localist focus from time to time.

Well, *I* think so, and that's why I've gone to the trouble of creating a *framework* for this process that you're indicating:


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


As I already said, the priority for consumption would be with the liberated-producers themselves, individually and collectively, in that order. You seem to think that the full-automation transition would be *automatic*, but, no, that isn't the case, because it's *workers* who would have to decide and then 'press the button' to initiate whatever directions in technological implementation.


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

Ok, but how does it work once the transition is over? I'm not judging either way, but I would like to better understand.

[ckaihatsu]

It's an important hypothetical, though. That's where the division of powers comes from - by thinking about the future hypotheticals. I think more community participation is indeed necessary either way, but I wouldn't be as idealistic as to believe that's a silver bullet.

All hyperbole, to avoid dealing with the monumental political issue in front of us of reform in the form of community policing. Nice try, though. At this point you're showing that you think the police should police themselves, when we already know the disastrous, monstrous result of *that*.

And to do that, there should probably more participation in local elections, to start with.

No, that's too status-quo -- it doesn't challenge the bourgeois ruling-class power hierarchy in the least. Localism / decentralization is a dead-end.

I wouldn't describe the WoP as inherently antirracist, and I don't think that's inherent to the WoD either. I think the latter was driven by the same Puritan and public health concerns that fueled the Prohibition. And the latter aren't baseless, but it turns out ending drug addiction by force is easier said than done, and has many unintended consequences.

Fortunately we don't have to rely on your guesswork / opinionating / hyperbole -- the War on Drugs has been roundly *racist*, and is a solid plank in the analysis of the U.S. being white-supremacist. You're sounding incredibly *naive*.

The War on Poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on Wednesday, January 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around nineteen percent. The speech led the United States Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. The forty programmes established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied them.[1]

As a part of the Great Society, Johnson believed in expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies.[2] These policies can also be seen as a continuation of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1937, and the Four Freedoms of 1941. Johnson stated, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it".[3]

The legacy of the war on poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal government programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, and Job Corps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty

---

The public did get its money back from the bailout. As for nationalization, what else should I say? We know it didn't work as the Soviet Bloc was a failure.

You already brought up that point, but the Soviet Union didn't start out with some high-minded "revolutionary" ideal of *nationalization*. That's what it wound up *doing*, but only from the aftermath of the White invasion of international counterrevolutionary forces against the Bolshevik Revolution.

Facts are great, aren't they?

Well, I *didn't know* the financial follow-up from the 2008-2009 bailout -- do you think we can expect the same this time around when the quantities involved are 100 times greater?

It may be a logistical treatment, but is what I said false? Politics needs to be grounded in the real world, not just be a declaration of principles that has no relation to the reality we live in. One that of course includes the persistent ills caused by bad past policy, and also the persistent benefits brought by good past policy depending on the case (redlining being one that only has caused ills however).

The *politics* is redlining and killer cops -- you're just *intellectualizing* again, and making an *abstract* statement that's removed from the core political issues at-hand, which makes me wonder why you even bother, and why you're here at a political discussion board. If you just want to kibbitz abstractly *around* the issues, you *can* of course, but I certainly don't see the point of it. Trying doing that *offline* for a change, for yourself only.


---

Okay, but you're not dealing with it as it exists *today*, characterized as a 'fourth' branch of government that's prevailing over policy and even the definition of what (U.S.) government *is*. If this description is accurate, and I think it is, then, yes, this *is* a constitutional crisis and an existential threat for the U.S.

I wouldn't say it's existential in nature, but as I said it's part of any functioning State. And the reason for that is simple: Government jobs, like many others, are specialized activities, which means Government officials are not easy to replace.

Particularly not career ones that also happen to fulfill essential functions in any modern society.

No, not every nation-state in history has had such an elite nexus of real governance *within* its specialized bureaucratic-elitist, formal / official apparatus. The U.S. itself has not been this way in the past -- it indicates a certain stalling / break-down of conventional official channels and procedures, which is why I called it bonapartist. My point stands that things are becoming too irregular and that this kind of 'shadow' governance is *unsustainable* for the nation-state. (Hence the recent protests, etc., mostly from *nationalist*-minded protestors.)

*All* professional-type jobs are specialized, and require more education and training upfront for any given employee. You're off on a tangent here with another spurious empirical description.

That's not true either, though. Social security, and then healthcare, represent almost half of Federal expenses.

Defense is around 15% of Federal expenses.

Hmmmm, maybe I was thinking of *discretionary* federal funding -- I may have to research it. It's still quite *significant*, regardless.


---

Yes, the *Stalinist* countries. Instead of *economic* commodification they primarily used *political* commodification, as is done by *corporations*. I recently wrote a *treatment* of this topic of *syndicalism*, at another thread:

It wasn't purely political though.

The *administration* / management of the USSR *was* virtually purely political since Stalin went to the extent of *purges* of his suspected political rivals -- it doesn't get more political than the practice of mass assassinations.

Correct, and this has an economic angle. You don't think he just used brutality to sustain his regime, do you?

Why do you continue to be so *vague*? If you have a point to make you should just make it, instead of being oblique and mysterious.

You're also *contradicting* yourself by saying that my analysis is sound, when you previously *disputed* my characterization of '[purely] political commodification'.

No disagreement with this idea.

---

Hey, I didn't *make* the world -- I only got here a few decades ago, and anyone can tell you that there's a distinct difference between *nationalist*, versus *internationalist*. You can do the math yourself to find out which is which.

Well, that's also hard to figure out in practice. Internationalists have shown a rather localist focus from time to time.

You have to look at what (political) people *say* -- what they *do* could be localist, but that's often just strategic or tactical, as a matter of *practice*. Politics is all about *trajectory*, and how people match up real-world events in terms of their political perspective / theory, or 'analysis'.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show

Also:


History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

Spoiler: show

---

Ok, but how does it work once the transition is over? I'm not judging either way, but I would like to better understand.

I call it a 'communist gift economy', meaning that no coercion would be possible since there wouldn't be any state, so all liberated-labor, necessarily for the common good, would be entirely *voluntary*.

Again, a good saying I developed is 'Those who want to consume can consume, and those who want to work can work.' (Or any mixture of the two, of course.)

All social production would be to meet outstanding human *needs*, then wants and desires.


[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

Spoiler: show

And:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

Spoiler: show

[wat0n]

All hyperbole, to avoid dealing with the monumental political issue in front of us of reform in the form of community policing. Nice try, though. At this point you're showing that you think the police should police themselves, when we already know the disastrous, monstrous result of *that*.

It's not a "nice try". I'm simply looking farther ahead than you are in this issue.

And no, communities are far from being the only ones who can police the cops.

No, that's too status-quo -- it doesn't challenge the bourgeois ruling-class power hierarchy in the least. Localism / decentralization is a dead-end.

Good luck giving Police Powers to the Federal Government under the Constitution.

Fortunately we don't have to rely on your guesswork / opinionating / hyperbole -- the War on Drugs has been roundly *racist*, and is a solid plank in the analysis of the U.S. being white-supremacist. You're sounding incredibly *naive*.

I'm not. It's simply that I don't automatically assume that everything that affects a given race more than others is evidence of racism.

You already brought up that point, but the Soviet Union didn't start out with some high-minded "revolutionary" ideal of *nationalization*. That's what it wound up *doing*, but only from the aftermath of the White invasion of international counterrevolutionary forces against the Bolshevik Revolution.

Sure, so what? This doesn't change the facts - particularly since they had 70 years to achieve whatever they were meant to achieve, and collapsed as a result of the failure to do so.

Well, I *didn't know* the financial follow-up from the 2008-2009 bailout -- do you think we can expect the same this time around when the quantities involved are 100 times greater?

Why would they be 100 times greater?

The *politics* is redlining and killer cops -- you're just *intellectualizing* again, and making an *abstract* statement that's removed from the core political issues at-hand, which makes me wonder why you even bother, and why you're here at a political discussion board. If you just want to kibbitz abstractly *around* the issues, you *can* of course, but I certainly don't see the point of it. Trying doing that *offline* for a change, for yourself only.

On the contrary, it's through critically thinking about the expected results of one's proposals that progress can be made. Why would I support a policy that doesn't have any good chance to deliver on its promises?

No, not every nation-state in history has had such an elite nexus of real governance *within* its specialized bureaucratic-elitist, formal / official apparatus. The U.S. itself has not been this way in the past -- it indicates a certain stalling / break-down of conventional official channels and procedures, which is why I called it bonapartist. My point stands that things are becoming too irregular and that this kind of 'shadow' governance is *unsustainable* for the nation-state. (Hence the recent protests, etc., mostly from *nationalist*-minded protestors.)

*All* professional-type jobs are specialized, and require more education and training upfront for any given employee. You're off on a tangent here with another spurious empirical description.

If anything I would say that the US is an excellent example of what I'm saying. Does 19th century patronage ring a bell?

Hmmmm, maybe I was thinking of *discretionary* federal funding -- I may have to research it. It's still quite *significant*, regardless.

I don't think you should assume most military spending is discretionary either. There's plenty of it that should be set by long term contracts.

Why do you continue to be so *vague*? If you have a point to make you should just make it, instead of being oblique and mysterious.

You're also *contradicting* yourself by saying that my analysis is sound, when you previously *disputed* my characterization of '[purely] political commodification'.

The key word there is "purely". Good or bad, Stalin did industrialize the Soviet Union, all through a nationalization of its economy, and this thereby involves transfers to the broader population. Given the USSR's position when Stalin rose to power, they did experience a material improvement at least until the war.

You have to look at what (political) people *say* -- what they *do* could be localist, but that's often just strategic or tactical, as a matter of *practice*. Politics is all about *trajectory*, and how people match up real-world events in terms of their political perspective / theory, or 'analysis'.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

Spoiler: show

Also:


History, Macro-Micro -- Political (Cognitive) Dissonance

Spoiler: show

---

Maybe. The problem though is that at some point what they do needs to match their rhetoric.

I call it a 'communist gift economy', meaning that no coercion would be possible since there wouldn't be any state, so all liberated-labor, necessarily for the common good, would be entirely *voluntary*.

Again, a good saying I developed is 'Those who want to consume can consume, and those who want to work can work.' (Or any mixture of the two, of course.)

All social production would be to meet outstanding human *needs*, then wants and desires.


[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

Spoiler: show

And:


Multi-Tiered System of Productive and Consumptive Zones for a Post-Capitalist Political Economy

Spoiler: show

I see. I'm still skeptical, it sounds like the problem with Marxism, which never really stated how would the New Man arise under socialism or communism.

[ckaihatsu]

It's not a "nice try". I'm simply looking farther ahead than you are in this issue.

All you're doing is *speculating*, on the imagined future politics of a community-policing-advocating group. This is tantamount to an *opinion* at best, and to *casting aspersions* / being-disparaging at worst.

And no, communities are far from being the only ones who can police the cops.

You're not *saying* anything here -- you'd rather go *around*, in a concentric circle, to deal with future-imaginings and 'not-communities', than to deal with the issue in front of everyone, which is what the alternative should be to letting the cops police *themselves*, which is obviously -- and popularly affirmed -- not working out.

Good luck giving Police Powers to the Federal Government under the Constitution.

I'm *not* advocating this as an alternative to police-oversight-of-policing.

*I* recommend the community-policing group, for the record. (Maybe many of them all over the country and world could *network*, and communicate overall regarding their shared experiences in their oversight of policing.)

I'm not. It's simply that I don't automatically assume that everything that affects a given race more than others is evidence of racism.

Fortunately it *doesn't matter* what your 'beliefs' are -- that's why I included the excerpt from Wikipedia, to provide some appropriate *empiricism*.

The War on Drugs is a term for the actions taken and legislation enacted by the United States government, intended to reduce or eliminate the production, distribution, and use of illicit drugs. The War on Drugs began during the Nixon administration with the goal of reducing the supply of and demand for illegal drugs, though an ulterior, racial motivation has been proposed.[1] The War on Drugs has led to controversial legislation and policies, including mandatory minimum penalties and stop-and-frisk searches, which have been suggested to be carried out disproportionately against minorities.[2][3] The effects of the War on Drugs are contentious, with some suggesting that it has created racial disparities in arrests, prosecutions, imprisonment and rehabilitation.[4][5] Others have criticized the methodology and conclusions of such studies.[6] In addition to enforcement disparities, some claim that the collateral effects of the War on Drugs have established forms of structural violence, especially for minority communities.[7][8]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_the_war_on_drugs

---

Sure, so what? This doesn't change the facts - particularly since they had 70 years to achieve whatever they were meant to achieve, and collapsed as a result of the failure to do so.

You're not understanding -- the initial Bolshevik Revolution didn't have a *goal* of Stalinism, but the internationalist aspect *wasn't realized*, due to militaristic invasions from the West, destroying the economy. The internationalist *aim* was decreased to mere *nationalism*, under Stalin.

I really don't *give a shit* as to what Stalinism was "trying" to achieve.


---

Well, I *didn't know* the financial follow-up from the 2008-2009 bailout -- do you think we can expect the same this time around when the quantities involved are 100 times greater?

Why would they be 100 times greater?

Just look at the *quantities* involved -- TARP was in the hundreds of billions, while Trump's bailouts are in the double-digit *trillions*.

On the contrary, it's through critically thinking about the expected results of one's proposals that progress can be made. Why would I support a policy that doesn't have any good chance to deliver on its promises?

You're speaking *indistinctly* again -- the issues at-hand are redlining and killer cops.

If anything I would say that the US is an excellent example of what I'm saying. Does 19th century patronage ring a bell?

So you're comparing everyday political commodification / patronage networks to a national constitutional *breakdown* and the rise of an unelected cabal for governance?

Sorry, I really don't see the comparability here.

I don't think you should assume most military spending is discretionary either. There's plenty of it that should be set by long term contracts.

Okay, yeah, you're definitely too dependent on your own opinions and definitions. I found the facts:

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/United_Stat ... ral_budget

Outlays for U.S. federal 'discretionary spending' is $1.3 trillion, which is 6.3% of GDP. It includes 'defense' [military], and 'nondefense', which is transportation, education, veterans' benefits, health, housing assistance, and other.

So the military spending is almost one-sixth of all *discretionary* spending.

The key word there is "purely". Good or bad, Stalin did industrialize the Soviet Union, all through a nationalization of its economy, and this thereby involves transfers to the broader population. Given the USSR's position when Stalin rose to power, they did experience a material improvement at least until the war.

Okay, I don't dispute this, and I've agreed with it in the past, at previous threads.

Maybe. The problem though is that at some point what they do needs to match their rhetoric.

Hmmm, there's your *moralism* again -- you have that tendency for *micromanagement*. Politics *isn't about* *individuals*, it's about what *policies* are being carried-out by institutions with authority.

When the *policies* are bad, like the U.S. being under the sway of a 'fourth branch' 'deep state', that's a *societal* / political thing, and transcends the opinions and actions of *everyone* in the U.S., *unless* there's a movement that's somehow effective in *altering* those policies.

Right now the killer-cops thing is on people's radar screens, so we'll see how *that* plays-out in terms of official policies.

I see. I'm still skeptical, it sounds like the problem with Marxism, which never really stated how would the New Man arise under socialism or communism.

This is a *cultural* concern, and not one of societal *productivity* and subsequent *distribution*. (I'm not a Maoist.)

[wat0n]

All you're doing is *speculating*, on the imagined future politics of a community-policing-advocating group. This is tantamount to an *opinion* at best, and to *casting aspersions* / being-disparaging at worst.

Not at all. Would you allow a community of White Supremacists to control their own policing? What's the difference between your proposal and neighborhood watch?

You're not *saying* anything here -- you'd rather go *around*, in a concentric circle, to deal with future-imaginings and 'not-communities', than to deal with the issue in front of everyone, which is what the alternative should be to letting the cops police *themselves*, which is obviously -- and popularly affirmed -- not working out.

How about enforcing the laws, busting police unions, making the cops wear bodycams and keeping them turned on and similar proposals?

I'm *not* advocating this as an alternative to police-oversight-of-policing.

*I* recommend the community-policing group, for the record. (Maybe many of them all over the country and world could *network*, and communicate overall regarding their shared experiences in their oversight of policing.)

So you don't want to centralize policing then?

Fortunately it *doesn't matter* what your 'beliefs' are -- that's why I included the excerpt from Wikipedia, to provide some appropriate *empiricism*.

Correlation is not causation and the existence of racial differences is not necessarily a result of racism. That's a logical leap that you are making, it might be true, it might be false, but it's a leap nonetheless.

You're not understanding -- the initial Bolshevik Revolution didn't have a *goal* of Stalinism, but the internationalist aspect *wasn't realized*, due to militaristic invasions from the West, destroying the economy. The internationalist *aim* was decreased to mere *nationalism*, under Stalin.

I really don't *give a shit* as to what Stalinism was "trying" to achieve.

Maybe. Honestly stalinism was probably the only way to somewhat sustain the regime in the long run.

Just look at the *quantities* involved -- TARP was in the hundreds of billions, while Trump's bailouts are in the double-digit *trillions*.

Although much of that is taking the form of transfers to households. Is it comparable to a bailout of companies?

You're speaking *indistinctly* again -- the issues at-hand are redlining and killer cops.

But that's a general principle that is applicable to policy making in general... Including to improve policing or eliminating redlining.

So you're comparing everyday political commodification / patronage networks to a national constitutional *breakdown* and the rise of an unelected cabal for governance?

Sorry, I really don't see the comparability here.

No, we simply have different definitions for what the "deep state" is. I have a broader one that includes civilians too, indeed, if anything the majority of those involved are civilians.

Okay, yeah, you're definitely too dependent on your own opinions and definitions. I found the facts:




Outlays for U.S. federal 'discretionary spending' is $1.3 trillion, which is 6.3% of GDP. It includes 'defense' [military], and 'nondefense', which is transportation, education, veterans' benefits, health, housing assistance, and other.

So the military spending is almost one-sixth of all *discretionary* spending.

Thanks. So then military spending is around 15% of spending regardless of whether we look at overall spending or just at discretionary spending.

Hmmm, there's your *moralism* again -- you have that tendency for *micromanagement*. Politics *isn't about* *individuals*, it's about what *policies* are being carried-out by institutions with authority.

When the *policies* are bad, like the U.S. being under the sway of a 'fourth branch' 'deep state', that's a *societal* / political thing, and transcends the opinions and actions of *everyone* in the U.S., *unless* there's a movement that's somehow effective in *altering* those policies.

Right now the killer-cops thing is on people's radar screens, so we'll see how *that* plays-out in terms of official policies.

It's not moralism though, if you don't deliver don't expect to enjoy support forever. This of course extends to policymaking, and understanding what the limits of it are. Applying this to law enforcement, I think it would be reasonable to approach this with care rather than apply slogans.

This is a *cultural* concern, and not one of societal *productivity* and subsequent *distribution*. (I'm not a Maoist.)

Maybe, but it's an important one. It is important to understand how much shirking would be going on in such system, for instance. That's definitely a productivity issue.

[Rich]

The Khmer Rouge is a good example of what de-funding the police. Look I'm sorry but we're just not going to take lectures from Commies on police brutalities, prison reform or civil liberties.

[ckaihatsu]

Not at all. Would you allow a community of White Supremacists to control their own policing? What's the difference between your proposal and neighborhood watch?

What I support is more like *Copwatch*.

Copwatch (also Cop Watch) is a network of activist organizations, typically autonomous and focused in local areas, in the United States and Canada (and to a lesser extent Europe) that observe and document police activity while looking for signs of police misconduct and police brutality. They believe that monitoring police activity on the streets is a way to prevent police brutality.[1]

The stated goal of at least one Copwatch group is to engage in monitoring and videotaping police activity in the interest of holding the police accountable in the events involving assaults or police misconduct.[2]

Copwatch was first started in Berkeley, California in 1990.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copwatch

---

How about enforcing the laws, busting police unions, making the cops wear bodycams and keeping them turned on and similar proposals?

How about them? What are you expecting me to say here?


---

Good luck giving Police Powers to the Federal Government under the Constitution.

I'm *not* advocating this as an alternative to police-oversight-of-policing.

*I* recommend the community-policing group, for the record. (Maybe many of them all over the country and world could *network*, and communicate overall regarding their shared experiences in their oversight of policing.)

So you don't want to centralize policing then?

I'm *not with* the bourgeois ruling class, so I have no interest in formulating their *policy* for them -- what's at-stake is the human toll of police-policed policing, which is 1000+ unnecessary deaths per year.

You're off-topic.

Correlation is not causation and the existence of racial differences is not necessarily a result of racism. That's a logical leap that you are making, it might be true, it might be false, but it's a leap nonetheless.

So are you saying that the War on (some) Drugs is *not* racist?

Maybe. Honestly stalinism was probably the only way to somewhat sustain the regime in the long run.

Stalin needs Stalinism, huh?

Again, it's *nothing close to* workers-of-the-world socialism.


---

Just look at the *quantities* involved -- TARP was in the hundreds of billions, while Trump's bailouts are in the double-digit *trillions*.

Although much of that is taking the form of transfers to households. Is it comparable to a bailout of companies?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARES_Act#Provisions

---

On the contrary, it's through critically thinking about the expected results of one's proposals that progress can be made. Why would I support a policy that doesn't have any good chance to deliver on its promises?

You're speaking *indistinctly* again -- the issues at-hand are redlining and killer cops.

But that's a general principle that is applicable to policy making in general... Including to improve policing or eliminating redlining.

Would you like to deal with the issues-of-the-day, particularly killer cops, or not?


---

No, we simply have different definitions for what the "deep state" is. I have a broader one that includes civilians too, indeed, if anything the majority of those involved are civilians.

You're going off on a tangent again -- how about *this* definition:

In The Concealment of the State, Professor Jason Royce Lindsey argues that even without a conspiratorial agenda, the term deep state is useful for understanding aspects of the national security establishment in developed countries, with emphasis on the United States. Lindsey writes that the deep state draws power from the national security and intelligence communities, a realm where secrecy is a source of power.[15]:35–36 Alfred W. McCoy states that the increase in the power of the U.S. intelligence community since the September 11 attacks "has built a fourth branch of the U.S. government" that is "in many ways autonomous from the executive, and increasingly so."[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_stat ... ted_States

---

Thanks. So then military spending is around 15% of spending regardless of whether we look at overall spending or just at discretionary spending.

Excuse me -- I misspoke. Military spending is 15.2380952% of *all* spending.

It's 50.7936508% of *discretionary* spending.


---

Maybe. The problem though is that at some point what they do needs to match their rhetoric.

Hmmm, there's your *moralism* again -- you have that tendency for *micromanagement*. Politics *isn't about* *individuals*, it's about what *policies* are being carried-out by institutions with authority.

When the *policies* are bad, like the U.S. being under the sway of a 'fourth branch' 'deep state', that's a *societal* / political thing, and transcends the opinions and actions of *everyone* in the U.S., *unless* there's a movement that's somehow effective in *altering* those policies.

Right now the killer-cops thing is on people's radar screens, so we'll see how *that* plays-out in terms of official policies.

It's not moralism though, if you don't deliver don't expect to enjoy support forever. This of course extends to policymaking, and understanding what the limits of it are. Applying this to law enforcement, I think it would be reasonable to approach this with care rather than apply slogans.

It *is* moralism, though.

You're only speaking from a *nationalist* perspective, and you're assuming some kind of amorphous undefined 'authority' over people's *political* lives, as to whether their 'actions' are matching their 'rhetoric'.

In positing this individualistic kind of standard you're sidestepping what really *matters*, which is government *policy* and its enforcement. There doesn't seem to be any law that prohibits cops from shooting people in the back as they're running away, so killer cops continue to do this, and more, on the streets.

Also please stop using hyperbole, stop going off on tangents, and instead address the *political issues*.


---

I see. I'm still skeptical, it sounds like the problem with Marxism, which never really stated how would the New Man arise under socialism or communism.

This is a *cultural* concern, and not one of societal *productivity* and subsequent *distribution*. (I'm not a Maoist.)

Maybe, but it's an important one. It is important to understand how much shirking would be going on in such system, for instance. That's definitely a productivity issue.

No, human labor is less and *less* a factor in material production as the ratio of *productivity* keeps getting higher and higher, due to increased use of machinery, computerization, and automated processes.

In other words human labor keeps getting increasingly *leveraged*, so then the social issue becomes more about who gets to *benefit* from such generic industrial-based processes.

'Shirking' is *also* moralism, because you're trying to make it sound like some work is *valid*, while other work is *not*, when, on the whole, it takes labor from *all* workers to complete projects and production runs. You're basically using a *strawman* tactic of rhetoric here.

You're sounding like you have some kind of micromanagement *authority* to disparage whoever you'd like to disparage, in the abstract. If I could summarily *ignore* your reckless moralist line, I would.

[ckaihatsu]

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/0 ... s-j17.html


Police violence and class rule

17 June 2020

It is now just over three weeks since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd set off mass protests throughout the United States and around the world. The political representatives of the ruling class have responded with, on the one hand, brute force and threats of military repression, and, on the other hand, pledges of “reform” and “accountability.”

Yesterday, Trump signed an executive order that would embed more social workers and mental health professionals with the police, create a national database to track officers fired or convicted for using excessive force, and ban chokeholds, with the exception, as the president explained, of “when an officer’s life is at risk.”

Trump announced his executive order in an address before police officers filled with calls for “law and order” and denunciations of protesters. Trump’s caveat on chokeholds leaves the window wide open for the continued use of the deadly practice, since police officers routinely claim that they fear for their lives when they grievously wound or kill someone.

The Democrats have offered up their own slate of cosmetic changes largely mirroring Trump’s, including banning chokeholds and creating a national database of abusive officers, while also explicitly rejecting the demand, popular among protestors, to “defund” the police. Former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee, has called for $300 million in additional federal funding to shore up police departments across the country, while Senator Bernie Sanders has said that cops need to be paid higher salaries.

Such measures will amount to less than nothing. They might as well propose to change the color of police uniforms. Inevitably, “reforms” from these representatives of the ruling class will end up strengthening the police as an oppressive apparatus of the state.

The promise of police reform has repeatedly been offered up by the ruling class as a supposed solution to excessive violence. In the aftermath of the urban rebellions of the 1960s, the Democrats claimed that more black police officers on the beat, more black police chiefs overseeing forces and more black mayors would solve the problem.

Half a century later, African Americans account for more than 13 percent of police officers, an overrepresentation compared to the population as a whole. Black police chiefs head departments across the country, and cities large and small have elected black mayors. In the last decade, the introduction of police vehicle dash cams and body cameras has been offered up as yet another panacea.

And yet the killing and abuse continue, and indeed have escalated.

What is absent from all of the media commentary on police violence, let alone the statements from bourgeois politicians, is any examination of what the police are and their relationship to capitalist society.

The uniform explanation of police violence as a manifestation of racism fails to explain anything. Of course, there is racism in the police. Fascistic sentiments are ubiquitous among the layers recruited into the police forces. However, the victims of police violence are the poor and oppressed of all races. Even as the protests are unfolding, the killing goes on—including of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, Georgia, who was black, and Hannah Fizer in Sedalia, Missouri, who was white.

The police function not as an instrument of racial oppression, but as an instrument of class rule. Since Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, it is worth recalling the role of the police 86 years ago in beating strikers participating in the Minneapolis general strike of 1934.

This is only one example of many. In every major class battle and social conflict in America, from the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 to the historic Arizona Phelps Dodge strike of copper miners in 1983-85, workers have confronted in the police the instrument for enforcing the “legality” of the ruling class. A fresh upsurge of strike activity will certainly see cops playing their classic role, i.e., attacking picket lines. And in another historic example of the traditional function of police in upholding capitalist law, protesters, who have recently had the opportunity to witness cops in action, should recall the infamous Chicago police riot of 1968. Thousands of anti-Vietnam War protesters were brutally beaten as they demonstrated outside the Democratic National Convention.

As social inequality and class tensions have grown over the past four decades, the size and budgets of the police have grown proportionately. The police account for between 20 and 45 percent of discretionary funding in the budgets of major US cities. Overall, spending on the police stands at $115 billion, up from $42 billion 40 years ago, in inflation-adjusted terms.

Federal police funding, including for the FBI and for grants to state and local police agencies, has increased more than five-fold during the same period. Since 1980, total spending on police and related institutions has risen from one percent of national income to two percent, while spending on welfare programs has fallen from one percent to 0.8 percent.

Police forces, moreover, are increasingly integrated with the military, the instrument of American imperialist domination abroad. Some $7 billion in military equipment has been transferred to local police forces over the past two decades. When Trump calls protesters “domestic terrorists,” he is merely extending the logic of the “war on terror” to opposition within the United States. The scenes of paramilitary SWAT teams toting assault rifles and driving in armored vehicles to confront protesters have all the hallmarks of an occupying force.

While the scale of police killings in the US is unique among the advanced economies, police brutality is a universal phenomenon.

Brazil, where corrupt police rampage through the country’s impoverished favelas, routinely leads the world in police brutality, killing several thousand every year. In the Philippines, thousands of poor workers have fallen victim to fascist president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs.”

In France, the full force of the state has been unleashed on the predominantly white “Yellow Vest” protestors, as well as African immigrants protesting for equality. Further east, police in Hungary are the subject of nearly 1,000 complaints of excessive force every year, without any significant consequences for the offending officers.

Sizeable protests against police violence and in solidarity with George Floyd have broken out in Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa, countries where the police forces are notoriously brutal. Hundreds are killed every year by state security forces in each country. One report from BBC News in April notes that “security forces kill more Nigerians than COVID-19:”

At least 1,476 people were killed by state actors in the country over the past year, says the Council on Foreign Relations. In its report about Nigeria's coronavirus lockdown period, the NHRC, a government agency, said it had found “8 separate incidents of extrajudicial killings leading to 18 deaths.”

How is this to be explained by racism? The international character of police violence—along with the proliferation of such violence in cities overseen by black police chiefs and black mayors—refutes the racialist narrative--the claim that what is involved in the US is the oppression of “black America” by “white America.”

Police violence is bound up with the character of capitalist society. The particular brutality of the police in the United States is to be explained by the particular brutality of class relations in America, the land of inequality and the home of the financial oligarchy.

In his Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State, written in 1884, Friedrich Engels provided the classic Marxist explanation of the state. The state, he wrote, is “by no means a power forced on society from without…”

Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel.

A central distinguishing feature of the state, Engels continued, is the establishment of a “public power,” which “consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons and institutions of coercion of all kinds… It [the public power] grows stronger… in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become larger and more populous.”

That is, the state is not a neutral arbiter. It, and with it, the “institutions of coercion of all kinds” are political instruments of the ruling class, which arise because of the irreconcilability of class interests.

The Socialist Equality Party stands for the abolition of the police. But the abolition of the police is bound up with the abolition of class society. Nothing will be changed with the skin color of the cops or the racial background of city authorities, nor with this or that token reform.

An end to police violence and the defense of democratic rights require the mobilization of the working class, in the United States and internationally, to abolish the capitalist state, expropriate the ruling oligarchs and establish democratic control over economic life on the basis of social need and not private profit. That is, it requires a socialist revolution.

Niles Niemuth and Joseph Kishore

Copyright © 1998-2020 World Socialist Web Site - All rights reserved

[wat0n]

What I support is more like *Copwatch*.

I see. Ok, that's certainly an option - I think we may have understood "control" differently. I understood the proposal as "exercising direction over the police". You seem to regard it simply as community monitoring of police actions. I think that's fine.

How about them? What are you expecting me to say here?

Given the above, I don't expect you to say anything

I'm *not with* the bourgeois ruling class, so I have no interest in formulating their *policy* for them -- what's at-stake is the human toll of police-policed policing, which is 1000+ unnecessary deaths per year.

You're off-topic.

I wouldn't say that deaths of armed people are presumably unnecessary. It depends on the situation.

But yes, the human toll of policing is definitely what should matter the most - hence my interest on concrete policy and not petty politics.

So are you saying that the War on (some) Drugs is *not* racist?

The available evidence doesn't allow for any conclusion either way.

Stalin needs Stalinism, huh?

Again, it's *nothing close to* workers-of-the-world socialism.

No, but it was what they were able to accomplish.

Thanks for the further details. I assume those loans are that, loans, so they should be paid back eventually. It's similar to those bailouts that were eventually paid back.

I can also clearly see that most of the money didn't go to them, although you are right that it wasn't transfered to households either.

Would you like to deal with the issues-of-the-day, particularly killer cops, or not?

Sure. I already mentioned some policies to deal with policing. I actually think your proposal of having community watchdogs would be good too.

You're going off on a tangent again -- how about *this* definition:

It's too narrow.

Excuse me -- I misspoke. Military spending is 15.2380952% of *all* spending.

It's 50.7936508% of *discretionary* spending.

Right, you are correct here. But discretionary spending itself is less than a third of the budget.

It *is* moralism, though.

You're only speaking from a *nationalist* perspective, and you're assuming some kind of amorphous undefined 'authority' over people's *political* lives, as to whether their 'actions' are matching their 'rhetoric'.

In positing this individualistic kind of standard you're sidestepping what really *matters*, which is government *policy* and its enforcement. There doesn't seem to be any law that prohibits cops from shooting people in the back as they're running away, so killer cops continue to do this, and more, on the streets.

Also please stop using hyperbole, stop going off on tangents, and instead address the *political issues*.

If it's legal for cops to shoot in the back under these specific circumstances (no threat of death or grievous bodily harm), then why are they being charged with felony murder?

And it's not "moralism" to say that support for Governments isn't infinite. That authority you mention, is actually the democratic process and it's over the politicians, in this case.

No, human labor is less and *less* a factor in material production as the ratio of *productivity* keeps getting higher and higher, due to increased use of machinery, computerization, and automated processes.

In other words human labor keeps getting increasingly *leveraged*, so then the social issue becomes more about who gets to *benefit* from such generic industrial-based processes.

'Shirking' is *also* moralism, because you're trying to make it sound like some work is *valid*, while other work is *not*, when, on the whole, it takes labor from *all* workers to complete projects and production runs. You're basically using a *strawman* tactic of rhetoric here.

You're sounding like you have some kind of micromanagement *authority* to disparage whoever you'd like to disparage, in the abstract. If I could summarily *ignore* your reckless moralist line, I would.

It's not "moralizing", you would want workers in a collectivized economy to be as productive as possible, wouldn't you? Shirking is simply a term for workers not exerting as much effort as they could. For instance, I'm shirking since I'm typing this rather than working

Now, if everything became automated and workers ceased to be necessary at all, then it would probably be feasible to indeed centralize everything in the way you say. But I doubt we are even remotely close to living in that kind of world. I think that while automating processes will indeed make many current jobs obsolete, others that cannot be automated (for now) will appear - both existing and new ones. A more interesting trend I think is the apparent de-physicalization that comes along with this process.