Notices by rastinza@qoto.org

@nutomic what is the advantage over Wikipedia? How do conflicts work when the same voice is edited on two instances at the same time?

@freeschool @freemo about the last point. In a communist economy the state decides how production is organised, how many people should be making bricks, how many people should be building cars and so on.
It is not for profit in the sense that there is no individual gaining the profits of those factories. The factories may make a profit, it could then be decided whether to reinvest that in the same factory or somewhere else.
It is the state to decide what the economy does, this means politicians, since they generally represent the state. Of course you can organise it in different ways: you don't necessarily need the prime minister to be there every day saying alright, the next week we need 50k bricks. You'll have comitees studying the economy and taking decisions along those lines.
Then you may have factory directors who'll be tasked with executing those things. We need your factory to produce 50k bricks a month, here is some money employ the necessary people and buy necessary machinery. The factory director will receive a salary, it may be increased if the factory works efficiently but he won't be directly profiting off the factory production.

Do politicians and economists know what is the better for the nation and are very good at organising production? No, not at all; that is not to be expected. On the other hand: are capitalists very good at the same? I would argue also no. Capitalism is a good system because it requires no bureaucracy to function, it functions automatically. It however also has plenty drawbacks for the people.

In communism do people at the top really make no profits? Well, there always will be corruption and power grabbing. But that is not really the point. The economy is organised in a different way. It is not capitalists deciding what a nation should produce in order to make profit for themselves. It is rather the government deciding what should be made on a national level.
Communism is one example of an economy type in which production is not controlled by capitalists for profit. It is not the only one.

The Soviet Union has failed under many fronts, but a 5 years plan appears like a wonderful way to organise the expansion of production. In capitalism you get that freely, but you also get a bunch of stupid people messing things up: 1929 crisis, dot com bubble, 2008 crisis these are all directly related to capitalism. Such a crisis can happen only in a capitalist economy, as it happens due to the expectations of profits of the people.

@freemo @freeschool
We have a clearly distinct vision of what capitalism is.
In my opinion capitalism exists when I can own the brick factory and decide what the brick factory should do and make money off of it. That is the capital. If I can have the factory, employ people and make money off the work of those people, whether I work or not, that is capitalism.
I don't see the complete freedom of trade as a prerequisite of capitalism. I'm allowed to have the capital, and profit off of it, even if restrictions are applied to prices.
If goods prices and quantities cannot be manipulated by the government, that is what I'd refer to as free trade.

Someone may be forcing me to sell bricks at a price within 5$ and 100$, but I still have the factory, I can decide what to do with the factory and I profit with the bricks produced by the factory.

The distinction here in my opinion is with other economic systems in which you are not allowed to own the factory, or if you are allowed to own it you are not allowed to make profit off the factory.
For example, you may "own" an association, but you cannot profit off of it; you can pay yourself a salary.
In a communist economy, nobody is allowed to own a company, you may be in the position to decide what the company should produce, but the company is not yours and you don't make profit off the company but rather receive a salary from the government.

@freemo @freeschool I don't receive notifications for your replies nor I see your toot you now refer to for some reason.

> Free trade definition

Sure I agree, I would definitely call a nation with no tariffs and trade restrictions a free trade.

> Capitalism cannot exist if not in a free market

I strongly disagree. If I own a brick factory I decide which kinds of bricks we produce every year and how many of each type. I decide that according to how much profit I expect to make. I own the factory, I shape the economy. The government can place tariffs on brick import/export, but it is still up to me to decide what is profitable and what should be done. The tariffs are just a restriction which may as well be modelled as a different production/demand curve. Production limits also do not remove my freedom to decide what to do, but rather limit it in certain aspects. Minimum and maximum prices imposed by the government also do not affect my ability to choose what to do according to my expected returns, they just change the kinds of choices I will take. Taking different choices according to external influences is normal, otherwise the capitalist economy couldn't adapt to the market anyway.

@freeschool @freemo
Sure, I agreed with you. A few remarks.
You say we don't have a free market now, I guess you refer to the United States - don't know about all places, but I feel a purely free market capitalism is practically unachievable unless you go into an anarchist society. As long as the government exists the government will be doing something: they must get some money somehow. It may not impose tariffs or trade restrictions but you can argue that any kind of taxation breaks the free trade in one way or another.

I feel the Oxford dictionary definition covers capitalism quite well and in a short sentence "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit."

I would not use plutocracy as a synonym of capitalism at all. That would imply that you cannot have a democratic state with a capitalist economy. Sure, democracy is strongly influenced by the rich in capitalism, but they don't necessarily have government powers and their interests can be disregarded by politicians.

I would not include state capitalism as a subtype of capitalism. It is in fact very different from capitalism, since individual people do not own the means of production and you don't organise production to generate profit but rather to supply the population with certain things. The decision process of which things to produce is very different from capitalism, you don't have a bunch of people deciding what the economy should produce according to how much profit they can make, but rather politicians and economists taking decisions according to what they feel is better for the nation.

@freemo @freeschool I feel a definition along the lines of "An economic system in which trade and production is organised by private entities (individuals or companies) to make profit" to be what I'd shortly describe as capitalism.
I wouldn't use it as a catch-all term, plenty of economic systems do not fall within such definition. But a socialist nation would definitely fall within the definition. Keynes argues for government spending in order to make the economy work better, and I never heard anyone say that Keynesian economics is not capitalist. Germany has a bunch of social programs, aids and public infrastructure, but it still is a capitalist economy. China... I don't know anyone who would argue it is not a capitalist country at the moment.
The Soviet union would not fall under that definition of a capitalist economy, current days Cuba also wouldn't.

@freeschool @freemo I disagree in the fact that I do not considere capitalism and free market to be the same thing.
Capitalism is a kind of economy, free market is an economic policy applied to a capitalist economy.
You can have a socialist policy and the economy would still be capitalist.

This is so cool. It fetches information about articles from wikidata and allows you to filter it in various ways.
https://scholia.toolforge.org/
Can this be used to have up to date lists of articles on a certain specific topic? Should it be used to do that? Could it be used to make reviews? Does it even make sense?

No idea, but very very cool. I need to take a deeper look at it, may add a few articles from my field and experiment how it works...

@Binder lose the pinky in battle, lose Emacs power

@Gert
If I can paraphrase the points:
1. I like C
2. C programmers are good
3. We have workarounds anyway

Request to review an article on a medical field arrived in my spam box. I'm not a medic. They even sent me the manuscript already.
Dear doctor, would you like to help us reviewing this paper?
Sure, how much you paying?

#AcademicSpam

@brembs
I generally never use it, but I'm so happy sci-hub exists.
@volephd

@GustavinoBevilacqua
I guess you'll need a real spring then.

L'unica cosa buona di lavorare in un ospedale è che i pazienti portano regali, e che il mio capo è semi astemio.

Oggi è arrivata grappa bianca fatta in casa invecchiata 10 anni. Bottiglia di coca cola da 2 litri.

@glynmoody very good opportunity for companies to develop their products using LLMs while they setup the infrastructure to run their own LLM.
You're getting good service at a very cheap price. Of course, you should not rely on it in the long term.

@GustavinoBevilacqua ma una volta che hai messo il codice corretto nel db. Poi come fai a ritrovarla quando hai bisogno di "rondella dentellata esterna"?

@tinfoiling @WiseWoman @kim_harding why is the letter being handwritten so important? Are you employing stenographers?

@shuttersparks @RickiTarr I don't understand your point. You say that humans do not have only two genders. Then You say that lions as well do not only have two genders. Then you explain that lions have homosexual sex, which by the way no I have never watched.

Maybe you lost it somewhere along the way, but where is the explanation that humans and lions don't have only two genders? As of now you explained homosexuality is common in nature, but I really don't see the connection between the two things.

Thank you @wesdym I know very little about all these gender identity.
In the article above they say there are 58 identified genders; do you know why that is and why are there not only 2 genders?
I can get the point that someone born as a male may identify as a woman and may wish to change sex and vice versa.
I'm a bit confused about the other 56 however.

@shuttersparks @RickiTarr

American Airlines flight. Due to a delay I lost a connection and arrived 7 hours late. I asked for compensation according to European rights.
I got a reply saying they couldn't give me a compensation given there was extreme weather, which voids those rights.
I pointed out in both locations it was sunny and not windy.
They replied it was not due to weather conditions but due to a delay in air traffic control approval and as such they will not compensate me.

They also said they'll be happy to see me again on one of their flights.
I pointed out my rights should still be respected and that I'll strive to avoid their flights in the future.
Let's see if they get it, or I'll have to go through the European Customer Centers to get my compensation.
No, I don't let this slip by; I will get my compensation.

#AmericanAirlines