[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm a lot less likely to report a crime after the George Floyd murder. Granted violent crime, like murder, tends to get reported regardless of a person's personal feelings about police, and reported murders are down

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

I like eco-dent I have some jagged spots on my teeth that most floss snags on. This stuff doesn't snag and it uses wax instead of forever chemical

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago

The US has, through concerted effort by the right wing, forgotten why FDR came into power. He was the heir of an extremely rich family. He managed to convince enough of the other oligarchs to avert going the way of the USSR. The US had revolutionary potential or the powerful would not have let this happen.

The policies that resulted from FDR's presidency had an enormous effect on the US's populace. It completely changed what the average American expected from their government. The politics of the Democrats, and even the Republican, president's that followed reflected the change that FDR's policies wrought.

It took 40 years of concerted media, intellectual, and religious capture for the right to regain anything resembling the political ascendancy they saw before the 1930s.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 72 points 1 week ago

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/13/a-punch-in-the-guts/

TLDR deregulating medicine has been a disaster. Monopolistic hospitals, ridiculous drug IP laws, and medical price middlemen with bad incentives make the US medical system the most expensive in the imperial core countries with the worst outcomes.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 31 points 3 months ago

I fail to see why an acoustic bike couldn't have been involved in a similar collision. This is a problem of car first infrastructure, not ebikes.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 36 points 4 months ago

A bit of a tangent but the year of jubilee is an interesting concept in the Torah. The idea is every 49 years they did an economic reset. Slaves were freed, debts forgiven, and land returned.

Unsurprisingly the concept was very appealing to enslaved people. During the US Civil War, many enslaved folks used it as a justification and rallying cry to escape to the north. In Defense of Looting argues that this was one of the most effective instances of mass political theft in history. This also had the effect of hollowing out the South's economy, swelling the North's military ranks, and scaring the shit out of racists everywhere.

I don't think reconstruction would have gone as far as it did without this mass political action and the power it gave formerly enslaved people.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 37 points 4 months ago

Yes, except a heat pump is capable of being more than 100% efficient because the using the power to move heat around is more efficient than converting power directly to heat

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 60 points 4 months ago

The system is designed to fail the vulnerable. Cops are domestic abusers, racists, and fascists. We need to develop ways to protect ourselves and our community. Wilkinson should have had an option other than the cops. She needed people who had been victimized in the past or at least would believe her and stood to protect her. Folks who would take turns keeping watch over her or give her and her kids a safe place to stay.

I don't think the cops can be reformed but that doesn't mean we can't keep each other safe.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 49 points 4 months ago

Damn, that's a quality shitpost. Well done

17
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by pearable@lemmy.ml to c/anarchism@lemmy.ml

Basically what the title says. I tend to lean anarchist but I'm not opposed to reading some Soviet sympathetic literature since I like to expand my horizons.

Edit: to be more specific. Parenti describes life in the Soviet Union as largely comfortable, perhaps too comfortable. People's needs are largely met. They have economic security. Most folks are quite skeptical of the news, "I know of all these disasters happening around the world but I don't know anything that's happening in my own country" and a general disbelief in the true news about the problems in capitalist countries. This results in a disatisfaction, particularly among the intelligencia and beauracracy, that results in the top down disollution of the USSR. From there he describes shock therapy and the deprevation that resulted.

How good is his research? How good are his sources? I believe quite strongly that we live in the most sophisticated propoganda machine ever devised. That makes me skeptical of a lot of the common narratives about the USSR but more than just the US is capable of lying and I'm curious how willing Parenti is to believe in obvious falsehood.

It should be noted he does criticize the USSR but at the end of the day believes in the project of state communism.

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 41 points 5 months ago

People tend to think of anarchism as a power vacuum. As soon as a charismatic person comes in they'll start gaining more and more following. But that's not really how it works. Anarchy is about filling that vacuum with everyone. If a decision needs to be made you bring in everyone the situation effects to make it. You start at the level of a household to neighborhood to watershed to biosphere. A charismatic wanabe tyrant will be frustrated every step they take towards getting more power.

Anarchists develop structures and agreements that discourage concentration of power. They enable people to guide their own lives and improve their communities. When violence occurs, when agreements are broken the community decided what is too be done.

All that assumes you're already there. One of the primary differences between anarchists and MLMs (Marxist Leninist Maoists) isn't necessarily their longest term goals, it's the means by which they reach them. MLMs believe that they must use the state, capitalism, and by extension coercive control in order to reach those goals. That brings the risk of capture and co-option of those structures. They've also accomplished incredible feats of human uplift so I wouldn't say their position is without merit.

Anarchists see the revolution coming about through a unity of means and ends. They create a better society by building it while the old one still stands. Their groups are horizontally organized. They create organizations to replace food production and distribution; and devlop strategies for housing distribution (squatting).

[-] pearable@lemmy.ml 100 points 6 months ago

Having app developers be able to avoid Apples forced 30% fee is great. The fee is pure rent seeking masquerading as curation.

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pearable

joined 6 months ago