Praxis/think tank

Sovcyb thread is more relevant to this.

This is also good. We need to draw up a general template of "what to do next?" in a flashy infographic form. You know, general tips in a flier on how to organize stuff like a Wobbly Shop for your community. In fact, we should make something like this. Maybe it can be part of Action Front?

But workers tend to form factory committees on their own to plan stuff anyways. Why?
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Essential reading for this thread: jacobinmag.com/2016/05/bernie-sanders-think-tank-heritage-brookings-policy/
Excellent topic, OP. It's something which we could actually do here.
We need a process for linking to and archiving threads on other topics and condensing what comes out into readable material. A big part of successful think tanks is their legible output - ideas don't mean much if they're not easily articulated and understood.

I think people are not taking into the unknown variable aka material conditions. Revolutions and subsequent socialist attempts have been marked by each their own unique material conditions. I feel like if we're going to deal with hypotheticals (and we really can't get too specific) we're going to have to establish some "givens" regarding what the situation will be like.

*taking into account

Building off of this, a good first topic to discuss might be the Ethereum cryptocurrency in light of how Japan has made Bitcoin legal tender. Let's see if we can get together some stuff on why the US should accept Ethereum, its more democratic, flexible, and non-deflationary cousin, as legal tender as well to move forward. We'll get a lot of traction with the Silicon Valley crowd (who are becoming more influential in politics) and start dismantling the power of MNCs (arguably the real threat today to any sort of communist or anarchist praxis in countries that aren't on the verge of collapse like Syria and Greece, seeing as they control elections and lobbying).

Publishing digestible info on single payer healthcare in the US is extremely valuable - it's one of the few nationalization attempts worth shooting for (extremely popular, would hurt Porky a lot). We're going to want to get into the nitty-gritty and make it into flashy charts, preferably in a style similar to Jacobin. Their aesthetic is nice, and even if we're well to their left, it will help give an appearance of a unified, modernized Left. I wouldn't put too much stock in nationalization these days as a general program, though - it's utterly moribund because all states rely on tax revenue and also have easily pissed off MNCs and global financiers who are ready to leave. If we're going to have state action, it should be to set up self-managed community networks and take place at local levels (for example, the American far-right lobbying group ALEC operates mostly at the state level - we could challenge that). Part of Sanders's platform was support for workers' cooperatives, and part of Melenchon's was workers' councils (more of an anarchist myself, but I could give some support to that, if never as a centerpiece of praxis). We can push it under the banner of libertarianism and self-help in America and work with the Pirate Parties in Europe. UBI's dangerous because it takes away agency from the people. If we're going to dabble in reformism, we want to create self-managed solutions above all else to create environments amenable to affinity group work.

We have some research ahead of us, comrades.

Bump

Looking at the history of popular revolutions is extremely important I think for the left. We have to understand the conditions that allowed leftist revolts to take place during the 20th century. For decades the anarchists in Spain had been organizing and educating people before the war which allowed the revolution to take place. The same happened in Russia before the 1917 revolution.
I have been reading about the German revolution recently and one of the many things that lead to its failure was that fact that most ordinary people where not ready for a revolution. It failed because they didn't have enough popular support.
The radical left has to be more visible to average and ordinary people if we are to get anywhere.

You got a higher res of that image?

Sadly no

You know it works

upwards

How do we fix Russia?

we destroy it at turn it into a buch of small independent republics

Bump. This thread has potential.

this has to be the first step

I think you mean Unify it with some other Soviet led Socialist Republics.

Bump

Just ignore them. They'll go away eventually. They're a military power, but will never be a true superpower.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_States

How in the fuck do we get this country (the United States) to finally convert to the Metric system in a way that eases/prevents alienating people that use the Imperial system into the system while simultaneously keeping people to use it, rather than just look up the Imperial measurements?

imperial is better for every day measurements, fag

just how

According to my dad the USA keeps the imperial system so their markets aren't flooded with stuff made with the metrics system in mind.
so its souble retardation

CPRF

STFU America is great. Don’t destroy glorious American culture with simplistic measuring systems. Inconsistent measuring systems cause people think more and become smarter. This is one of the many reasons America is so smart.

blog.ethereum.org/2014/04/10/the-issuance-model-in-ethereum/
In particular:
>One of Bitcoin’s great value propositions was the algorithmically fixed total issuance of the currency which mandated that only 21,000,000 BTC will ever be created. In a time of profligate legacy currency printing in an exponentially doomed attempt to patch over the fact that there is too much debt in the global economic system (with more debt), the prospect of a universally accepted cryptocurrency that can serve eventually as a relatively stable store of value is attractive. Ethereum recognizes this and seeks to emulate this core value proposition.

Is there ANY blockchain currency that isn't, at its core, a Ponzi-scheme run by foaming-at-the-mouth goldbuggering ideologues who lack any historical knowledge whatsoever as to why the gold standard was decried yet another porky scheme to steal from the common man?

Obvious troll but consider that scientist and engineers, the smartest people in the US use the metric system.

Imperal system is better. And scientists just use it so there research is compatible with the rest of the world because Americans can use the metric system, but non-American can’t use the imperial system.

guys pls

The metric system also has its own problems as well that need immediate addressing, the only reason it seems right is because its easier to use a system of 10s. SI also has the problem of having the fundamentals being dependent on one another when some really shouldn't like Candela, Mole, Amp and Kelvin being dependent on kg. The one thing the imperial system has going for it is that the system is "organic" meaning it chose its fixed points based on natural phenomena and so based on a somewhat undefined but agreed upon measurement. That's not to say imperial is perfect but the metric system is only less bad, not perfect.

mentalfloss.com/article/31122/not-so-perfect-kilogram-and-why-metric-system-might-be-screwed
Forgot link

ok I'll will try…

Guys I think in the next decade neolib technocrats are going to try to push for UBI. How do we message against that and should we?

Only if you're ready to message against welfare and government jobs programs. You aren't going to succeed by criticizing these programs for delaying the revolution while in the same breath decrying them for not paying enough.

And by that I mean "literally get into office and repeal Medicare and Social Security", for my fellow burgers. If the bourgeoisie can actually put off the revolution for an arbitrarily long time by palliative programs, the only way to actually start it is to get rid of them, no?

Most would argue that

What's the best gov't system?
Unitary or federal?
Presidential or parliamentary?

Very random content ITT, I blame OP's vagueness.

CONFEDERACY

Why? It litterally makes it easier to convert them.

Lol fuck no your shitty system is defined in SI units. Using barley seeds is no basis for a system of measurement, using the speed of light is better and they are currently working on pinning down the kg.

The point isn't that they're easier to convert, the point is having them be fundamental constants which can operate independently of one another. Even more so the mole and candela are redundant and because the kg isn't pinned down most of the whole system is affected. The meter being based off the speed of light is a modern occurrence and before that was based on more then questionable definitions.

The imperial system doesn't try to follow strict fundamentals, it works more on just "about" and was mostly made with construction and every day measurements in mind. Nobody basis things on barley seeds anymore of course, now its the general visual consensus to define what a foot is. Our brains actually have a very hard time understanding abstract numbers, especially when were younger, but have a far easier time with visualizations like feet because we don't run on algorithms, we run on association. If your thinking about a foot, you visualize about 12 inches with each inch being about the size of your thumb . If your thinking of a meter, your have to try to visualize 100 centimeters which has relation to being 1/100th of a meter which is related to the speed of light. Of course metric will be better for precise mathematical calculations but for general household work or construction imperial has worked fine as its simply what we agree on. How much is a foot? About 12 inches. How much is a yard? About three feet. You don't even convert that much, you mainly just measure with whichever unit you need to. Also, when I said SI I meant we also use the SI system, not that imperial is based on it.

Guys, you don't seem to be getting the point of this thread. Instead of arguing stuff, get data on relevant topics (single payer in USA, what kinds of policies would benefit workers' cooperatives) and compile it into useful infographs. That would be a better start than discussing stuff like we do all day here anyways. Take pic related.

I have long contemplated the idea of completely eliminating tax deductions, as this would both eliminate the need to itemize, and eliminate essentially every form of porkbarrel tax loophole. But there is one problem.

Corporate tax is, so far as I can tell, the only tax that fundamentally requires a deduction (expenses, so that high-volume businesses whose margins fall below the tax rate can still be profitable after tax, but getting a corporate accountant to honestly distinguish between "gross" and "net" is far from simple, as anyone in Hollywood knows). Further, corporate tax is, perhaps only rivaled by capital gains tax, by far the most labyrinthine and corruption-prone area of the entire tax code, and has been widely known as inherently exerting a distortionary macroeconomic influence over the behavior and investment strategies of business.

For all these reasons, I had long thought that it would be best to simply eliminate corporate tax and shift the burden down the food chain to capital gains and the like, until I read this article:
ctj.org/ctjreports/2013/06/fact_sheet_why_we_need_the_corporate_income_tax.php

Is this right? It sounds like just an implementation problem that could be fixed by eliminating the tax-exempt status of some other sectors, but is it fundamental?

Bump

having units based on other units, theories dependent on other theories and rocks dated with fossils that are dated with rocks is the great achilles heel of modern science and the only reason I wonder if we're not headed into a new dark age. No one except for quacks like Sheldrake seem to notice how fucking loopy all of this is and nerds are too low T and agreeable/in love with "science" to question if its not an insane system.

Just let this thread die. At this point, it's better to start up a thread with a more specific OP. This wasn't meant to be a general discussion thread.
I'm not OP, btw.

Does flippantly leaving a flaming shitbag on a politician's doorstep count as direct action?

Depend, can you manage to make him catch disentery?