A new mode of production arises out of the newly networked masses.
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Flash games
Productivity has always been there
hestianerd1
Because shockingly when people enjoy what they do (you make it enjoyable instead of just hammering on them) people WANT to do things!
thehottestmess
Fanfiction authors!!
Where is the button to shout this from the rooftop?
mythologylinguist
As much as I want to support ethical farming practices I will be buying the cheapest bag of frozen chicken thighs as much as the next frugal/poor person which is why animal welfare needs to be legislated, not left up to the invisible hand of the free market or some bullshit. Invisible hand of the free market finds itself around a lot of throats.
There are a lot of essays around about how economics is NOT a science. I wish I could remember the scientist who summed it up best for me (I think it was Michio Kaku but I was watching a LOT of Kaku at the time and I can’t find evidence that it was him, so I think I have to just leave it unattributed) that the fundamental problem with economics is the term: externality.
Externalities are the things outside the system that is supposedly dictating how things work but still influencing it. Economic theories, unlike theories of any scientific discipline, are not required to account for externalities.
One of the most common externalities is environmental impact and that was what set the scientist I heard off. The thing he and the economists were talking about was potential nuclear fallout from a space mission.
While not the likely outcome, there was a real potential for the mission to irradiate Earth’s atmosphere.
The scientist was arguing that the potential for the launch vehicle to explode in the higher atmosphere, which has happened - that’s not an abstract possibility, and would result in spreading the nuclear materials powering the mission through the atmosphere and over the entire planet should be accounted for in the process of risk evaluation for the mission.
The economist said that the radiation threat was just an externality. So the possibility should be ignored for risk assessment.
A risk is not a risk if it isn’t what the economist is interested in. Replace risk with factor and you have hit why calling economics the “dismal science” is only half correct. You cannot be scientific if you simply ignore the parts you don’t like.
The factors put in and left out of economic theory make it bs even where it’s correct, the same as a broken clock is not fixed in the moments that it is correct.
The biggest load of bs that economists, and non-economists trying to use economic theory to justify themselves, have been trying to foist off on humanity like it’s perfumed gold for decades in spite of ample proof to the contrary is the idea that selfish individual action results in mass beneficial action.
The most famous real life example of this is trickle down economics but understand that is simply an example. It is based on the underlying idea that if everyone does what is best for themselves it will result, miraculously, in everything evening out to be the best outcome for everybody. This is the idea championed by all of Ayn Rand’s heroes and skewered by the game Bioshock. The extremely well known effects of the Tragedy of the Commons, that any economist will be happy to explain to you like you’re an idiot, are externalities.
The idea that the best possible choice for an individual will inevitably lead to the best possible outcome for everyone is the root of the justification for deregulation as a political policy. Somehow, via the great chain, a business cutting corners to provide cheaper, less safe food so they can increase their profit margin and an underpaid consumer buying the cheapest possible product so that they CAN have a chance at making ends meet will result in everyone being better off.
And for anyone who will decide that that is a consumer choice and an issue of personal responsibility, I will remind them now that such things as morality and long term thinking are externalities.
Probably the starkest way to talk about this is American fishing industries.
Perhaps you are an American who is upset about environmental damage and the impact of eating fish. You decide not to eat fish. You remove your $5/month from the system.
Now, here’s where the path forks. If you’re personally changing your consumption habits because knowing what you know about fish has made eating fish unpleasant for you, then it is a complete sentence. That’s one of the best possible reasons to do anything, and may fortune follow your endeavour.
But let’s say you’re changing your consumption habits as part of your plan to SAVE THE WORLD. it is patently obvious that this action won’t save the world, but you feel that “if everyone did it” the world would be saved. In fact, you’re planning to go one step further than virtually anyone else, and as a result of some truly game-changing campaigning and devoting your tremendous talents to this one cause, you have successfully convinced so many people to join you in this behavioral change that you’ve removed $10,000 a month from the fish-buying system. Holy cow, that must be materially saving the world a little bit, right? How shall we quantify this impact? how many fishy lives have we saved with this? How healthy is the ocean getting?? This is pushing the needle in the right direction, right??
Well, in the case of the American fishing industry… no. The American fishing industry made $165 billion in commercial sales in 2019, which means about thirteen billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars a month, which means that it can absorb a change of -10,000 spent in grocery stores without noticing - no Congressman is going to pound his fist on the desk and say “by Jove, the People have changed their minds about fish!” when it’s about the same impact as a freezer in a supermarket breaking down - but honestly, we knew that, what about PUSHING THE NEEDLE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION? HOW ELSE CAN WE COMBAT OVERFISHING APART FROM BUYING LESS FISH? It feels so goddamn obvious that it HAS to be the path forward! This is the way, guys, let’s try to make it $100,000 and THEN we’ll make a difference -
The most depressing externality here is subsidies. The American government directly subsidizes the American fishing industry to the tune of about $35 billion per year*. Of those, environmental groups estimate that over half of them are actively harmful. In addition to distorting The Economy, these “harmful” subsidies actively encourage increased fishing, support commercial enterprises to take risks, practice damaging behavior, or to simply stay in business when they’re no longer profitable.
* this takes into account a lot of factors, some seemingly innocuous, like state sales tax exemptions on fishing vessels, direct disaster aid payments to businesses, and marketing programs to support the industry and increase sales. Others are the result of quite specific lobbying, like the Fishermen’s Contingency Fund, where the American federal government pays out cash to commercial fishermen inconvenienced by oil and gas works - or the Surplus Fish Buyback programs… which purchase unwanted fish cheaply to put in school lunches. The combinations of direct/indirect payments, encouragements and programmes exist to keep American fishing exactly how it is.
This system means that whatever money you choose to withhold from this machine, the machine simply takes from you. You’re locking your $5 in your wallet to save a fishy life: the industry simply takes $5 from your taxes and kills 10 fish with it. You can’t “hurt a system in the profit” or “hit them in the wallet” or “vote with your dollar” when the machine is designed to extract your money regardless of blips, blips like “you not personally handing them your grocery money.” You’re going to change America’s minds about fish by Going Viral? Your tax dollars fund marketing programs to cancel out that impact. You’re hoping that rising fuel costs and climate-change-storms will make it less attractive to send boats out? Not in a subsidised economy, they don’t - it allows the industry to be disconnected from the market! What about if eVeRyOne did it - if we just scaled it bigger and managed to get 2% of fish-buyers to stop, or something? Well, the government already buys extra/unwanted fish for food programmes like school lunches or federal aid - you’d definitely instantly see more Mandatory Bargain Price Fish Meals being fed in schools, the military, state-owned care facilities, etc. But who knows how many heads the hydra might sprout to defend itself? If a $165billion/year industry backed by $35billion of government encouragement doesn’t want to stop, then it won’t. It is not part of the same market conditions that you are.
The point here is that it’s tempting to think of The Economy as something that notices you. It seems clear and obvious that “the solution to overfishing” would be “not eating fish.” And in a simplified market-led economic system it would probably be the case. You simply do not buy the fish, the supermarket sadly throws it away and tells the fisherman, and the fisherman counts up his dollars, checks the buzz on social media, and decides to run ecological whale-watches from his boat instead; the fishy lives are saved. But we don’t even live in a fantasy approximation of that system. Many parts of The Economy are completely artificial, and the machine is designed to resist market pressure. So the beguiling idea of “not feeding the machine” is easy to repeat! but ultimately it does not stop the behavior of the machine.
Solutions to stopping the machine do exist. It’s a human-made thing. You can break it, replace it, change its parameters, reduce its size, take away its nozzle for feeding itself by extracting cash from your back pocket, send it to China, stop it from emigrating to China, or bully it as much as you like. You can put it in a cage with a sustainable amount of food and tell it that it may make a sustainable amount of profit. You can paint it green and call it Eco. You can destroy its batteries, or install it with a solar panel, or adopt it out to a commune of low-income women. You can make the machine illegal. You can wait for another nation to kill it. You can kill it yourself. You can continue your stop-eating-fish campaign to fund ways to attack the machine. You can get many people together to put pressure on the machine. You can wait for it to run out of food.
But you need a bigger plan than “not feeding it,” and above all, you must not pretend that it doesn’t exist. And if you want its impact changed - if you want there to be more fish in the ocean - then you can’t get there by buying/not buying fish; you have to get there by addressing the very real machine.
Tangential fun fact! The Tragedy of the Commons is a myth popularized by Garrett Hardin, a eugenicist in the 60’s. In the article he published on the subject, he defined the term using a hypothetical scenario: a peasant community who collectively share common land for all their cattle to graze on, where each peasant keeps increasing their herd size for their own gain, ultimately resulting in the land being overgrazed and the system collapsing.
This is not what actually happened. In reality, commons systems were sustained for centuries. Communities would regulate themselves, and moreover nonstop growth wouldn’t be feasible or desirable for your average herder—the logistics just don’t support it. The actual historical downfall of the commons came from wealthy landowners and nobles encroaching on the commons and privatizing the land so it could no longer be used communally.
And you know what the eugenicist author used this ahistorical hypothetical he created to argue for, in the main thrust of the paper? You guessed it, eugenics! The 1968 paper “The Tragedy of the Commons” is about how overpopulation is just like the (fictional) commons problem, and how the only way to fix things is to let poor children starve to death. No, really, he says so explicitly. Go read it for yourself if you like.
The real problem is capitalism and those who support it, not fundamental human nature.
Many parts of The Economy are completely artificial, and the machine is designed to resist market pressure.
Shut up I'm not crying. Also behold the rewards of research and sensitivity!! That's practically a fable - like the lion decided out of true generosity of spirit to research mice and discovered it actually WAS a mouse and that was why being a lion was so goddamn difficult ... the analogy needs work but you get it. Anyway go and see Everything Everywhere All At Once. People said it was what ADHD feels like and going in I was like "if it gives normal people ADHD glasses then how will I, an ADHD person, even be able to distinguish that" ... and then there were scenes like "The protagonist is having an extremely fraught conversation about her taxes. She is simultaneously, in another reality having a very fraught conversation about saving the universe. In both, she is scolded for not paying enough attention although in one her interlocutor should KNOW exactly why this is difficult." And the line "I never know what is going on but I have a feeling it's my fault!" ... and I was all OK yes this is in fact what ADHD feels like.
say it george!!
Just gonna go off topic and mention how many times I, a cisgender woman, shave my upper lip because facial hair feels out of sync with my gender identity. I don’t understand why cis people fail to see all the little ways we affirm our gender every day and fail to extrapolate how much more intense it is for trans people.
tbblobnoern tuesday
tbblobnoern tuesday
tbblobnoern tuesday
Nicknames: when you shorten someone’s name affectionately
Nicholasnames: when you elongate someone’s name affectionately
goldmoonmari-deactivated2023011
The moment a person is like don’t eat fruit there’s too much sugar. I automatically know they don’t know ANYTHING
i think that they were girlfriends
If Amazon successfully buys the Roomba company then they will own one product that lets them spy on your front door and another product which creates scans of the inside of your house. Probably nothing to worry about
And they will cheerfully share their data from surveilling you with the police without a warrant! In fact they have agreements with the police to do so, which is why police sponsor community use of their tools!
Amazon finalized the deal to buy Roomba's parent company around early August 2022
Stumbles out of google docs covered in blood
This is how Pippin talks to Aragorn after he’s crowned
btw it's okay if you can only convince yourself to do things with silly reasons. when i wash my face i narrate a "skincare routine" youtube video in my head. once, a pretty girl once said she was attracted to me while i was moving crates around, and that was my motivation to do yard work today. exercising is a lot easier when i think about how i want to be able to pick up my niece and swing her around even when she's older.
so like if pretending you're doing real-life stardew valley gets you out in the sun, or if making yourself a good meal makes you feel like you're the host of a cooking show, do it! do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself!
