I just can't find the words to describe how happy I was to receive so much feedback and understanding on your part, this community is truly wonderful <3

I'll work on some of your (legal) ideas in my spare time, which is not much but I work fast! So far I've designed a generalized edit distance function with some pretty cool properties that would make it useful for running an organization under non-friendly conditions:

$ cat message1.txt
Liberal anti-fascism is a reactionary idea. Anti-fascism is not practical without being anti-capitalist.

$ cat message2.txt
The anti-fascism of liberals is not a progressive idea. It is impractical with no anti-capitalism.

$ cat leak.txt
Liberals' anti-fascism is not useful without anti-capitalism, not a progressive idea.

$ ./trace.py leak.txt message*.txt
Delta | File name
----------------------
   19 | message1.txt
    8 | message2.txt

Predicted origin of 'leak.txt' is 'message2.txt'.

So far it works with any sufficiently long text I've thrown at it. Make two versions of any text, rewrite any of the two into a third file, and the algorithm will trace its origin. Also the math is pretty elegant!

For obvious reasons I won't be publishing any of it any time soon :) Maybe the RTC will advise me on what to do. Or maybe I'll just hoard a bunch of software like this. Anyway, thanks, I'll keep at it.

Disclaimer: bipolar rant.

tl;dr: I'm frustrated that no one is working on clever schemes like this where I could help. All the weaponized math is for capitalist crypto-bros, drug dealers and think tanks, what an unfair world...

Honestly, seeing the real economic and social implications of fields like game theory, cryptography etc. makes one wonder if it could be possible to put these to revolutionary use. I know about the Revolutionary Technical Committee and might get in contact with them, but I'm not sure if they'll know of some concrete project that would help, something like a bunch of decentralized software, smart contracts, mathematical proofs... I can write all of these, but what for?

For example, this comment of mine proposes an economic scheme that would require all of the above to coordinate, secure and trust, to optimize functioning and minimize necessary involvement. But I'm sure there are other (better?) ways to use math and tech directly for revolution. Any revolutionary ideas where the questions arise of "why should I trust...?", "how can we ensure...?", "how to optimize...?" can theoretically benefit from them.

Even my local revolutionary organization mentioned a problem that could be solved using a certain crypto scheme, namely securely and anonymously swapping vehicles between owners, to be presented to the general population but actually meant to avoid identification while reducing transportation costs.

According to the document:

• The project involved, among other tasks, performing gain-of-function on bat coronavirus SARSr-CoV WIV1, with the aim of studying its potential ability to infect humans.
• The researchers believed regulations on gain-of-function research did not apply in this case, since the original virus did not affect humans, despite the desired product virus being able to do so.
• Their risk assessment does not include the possibility of the newly created virus accidentally infecting workers or human research subjects.
• The resulting viruses were to be tested on both human tissues and modified mice with human ACE2 enzyme.
• Human subjects from "high-risk areas" were involved on-site for non-experimental purposes.
• These experiments were performed within facilities of the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• The phase of the project wherein these experiments were first mentioned started on June 2019.

Additionally, this adds:

• The entire project started in June 2014 and initially involved collecting virus samples from different sources, including the wildlife market in Wuhan.

My region is home to the world's largest worker cooperative, Mondragon Corporation. Do you think worker cooperatives are useful to us? Why aren't they more widespread? Could their growth be facilitated by new technologies like the Internet or Blockchain?

Basically, the assumption is that PPP-adjusted GDP per capita (B) is a reliable measure of the economic activity in a country, while its ability to satisfy the needs of its population is better quantified by the PPP-adjusted median wealth per adult (D).

Wikipedia provides B, as well as unadjusted GDP per capita (A) and unadjusted median wealth per adult ( C), so it's a reasonable assumption that D = BC/A. Since B represents production, C/A is a coefficient indicating how well this production translates to better quality of life.

So, my question is, for an arbitrary D, how much do each of both factors contribute to it? We need to find x so (Bx)(Cx/A) = BCx²/A = 1, so, since 1 = D/D = BC/AD, we find that x = 1/sqrt(D).

Then the normalized production factor is Bx = B/sqrt(D) = B/sqrt(BC/A) = sqrt(AB/C). Since this factor follows a logarithmic distribution, is only makes sense to take the logarithm, for p = log10(sqrt(AB/C)) = 2log10(AB/C). I just omitted the constant factor for simplicity.

It's far from perfect, as it tends to put together countries with lower GDP per capita and countries with fairer distribution, since both rely less on a high production.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/379379

CDC 2019

CDC 2021

First, my story. As a teenager I used to believe that just letting everyone "do whatever the hell they wanted" (whatever that means) was the best way to build a state, even if that meant letting people's freedom be taken away by others. I didn't think that stuff because I was right, but because people who believed it were really good at making me feel like they were making a reasonable point.

Now, as a Marxist-Leninist, I feel exactly the opposite. I feel I'm more critical and better informed than ever, but a lot of you (sorry) are terrible at conveying that. Ideologies don't just exist in a vacuum, they need to be consistent and understandable from the highest level of logic to the lowest primal instincts they seek to evoke. Nobody should have to read a truckload of theory just to think "oh, ok, they aren't lunatics".

I feel this is something we should really dive into and discuss as a leftist community. I insist that people ultimately only want to feel like they're doing good stuff, and what that exactly means is affected by their material conditions. At a bare minimum, we should try to be kind to others (and especially to other comrades!), even if we don't wish to go the extra mile to hear their opinions or explain ours to them.

I really wish we can one day see more people posting here... We're fortunate enough to have come across what leftism is all about, so we should not keep that truth as a secret to ourselves, as a reason to look down upon others and divide the working class, but as a common good that can be spread, a hard, undeniable fact to unite us against oppression.

Please tell me what you think about this. And note that this rant is not related in any way to the Wolfballs events, I just wanted to let this out for a long time.

Yours sincerely, your comrade @pancake <3

The original CIA document link does not work/content was removed, but fortunately the document is archived.

So, since Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, I assume a traditional representative democratic system is not viable, as it overrepresents other classes and their desires. So what other forms of governance have been used?

All the quotes in the article are taken from book "My Song: A Memoir of Art, Race, and Defiance" by Harry Belafonte, which can be purchased here.

“Suddenly, Martin lost his temper. ‘I don’t need to hear from you, Andy,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard enough from you. You’re a capitalist, and I’m not. And so we don’t see eye to eye—on this and a lot of other stuff.’

“The tension peaked. ‘The trouble,’ Martin went on, ‘is that we live in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level…That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we’re going to have to change the system.’

“At heart, Martin was a socialist and a revolutionary thinker. He spoke not just in anger, but in anguish. His voice dropped to a more reflective tone as he continued. ‘We fought hard and long, and I have never doubted that we would prevail in this struggle. Already our rewards have begun to reveal themselves. Desegregation…the Voting Rights Act…’ He paused. ‘But what deeply troubles me now is that for all the steps we’ve taken toward integration, I’ve come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house.’

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/430091

Starting in 1956, the USSR begun reducing the total hours of labor, which had a deadline to meet by 1968. If this plan was successful, hours of labor would have went from 48 hours a week, to 30 hours a week, and the minimum wage would have went from 250 to more than 600 rubles.

In 1961, the CIA was worried as how the USSR could be reducing the workday, without reducing its efforts in the cold war.

CIA originally believed that if the USSR reduced work hours, then it would be harder for the USSR to maintain their defense. However, what they found was that USSR was able to solve many problems by reducing the hours worked. They were able to tap into a large reserve of labor.

The soviets forcing managers to reduce labor time in return led to higher automation, introduction of new technology, and more advanced production measures. Increasing output in light and heavy industry was achieved by increasing employment.

Reduction of labor hours in the USSR actually did what Marx predicted it would in volume 1 of capital. The density of the workday could be increased by reducing the workday. You could produce more by working less. The USSR proved Marx theory to be true.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/411395

Every production system has a way to assign jobs to citizens. The basic idea is that the kinds of labor "required" by society for an efficient fulfillment of needs don't necessarily align with those that an unhindered free choice of jobs would afford.

The way this is solved under capitalism is letting labor be a commodity, subject to market forces. Workers earn wages that are determined by the demand for their work and the availability of it. The difference in wages across jobs pushes us towards working jobs we otherwise wouldn't.

I believe the importance of the job market is underestimated in past Marxist literature. It used to be the case that labor was expendable and interchangeable; the availability of any one kind of labor greatly surpassed demand, making wages just a way to keep the proletariat living and reproducing.

However, with an increase in automation, those jobs have long ago disappeared in developed countries, and new ones are taking their place. Notably, these new jobs increasingly require training, which has the effect of making a worker unsuitable for all but their own specialized job.

As a result, wages are now established mainly by market forces. If an employer can, by virtue of the rest of the economy, offer worse working conditions than minimally required by the workforce, they will. Conversely, if a particular kind of labor is sold for a higher price, the employer will oblige.

As a special case that I'd like to mention, those that are very heavily demanded (e.g. public figures, elite sportsmen...) can get extremely high market prices for their labor. This is a new mechanic that has become more common.

I'd like to discuss how a Socialist country would tackle the problem of job distribution, in a way that hopefully offers better guarantees than a free job market.