Notices by clarity flowers (clarity@xoxo.zone)

@Mycroft this is the future liberals want

@uoou oh I super need to play crusader kings for sure, good call

@jplebreton I’m most confused that anyone thinks “communism” is a word that means anything in particular.

no you don’t understand. under communism you won’t get the job you want, or the house you want, because of corruption. you as a naive american could never understand how hard this is

few people more annoying than people from communist regimes chiding trans women for using the word communism

@janbogar I would simply not get in a stranger’s mentions actually

@janbogar Lmao

@castanea_jo it’s too much for me to play but I should find some good livestreams of it to get a feeling for how it works

favorite/most interesting video games that simulate abstracted social interactions/relations between people? ex The Sims, Rimworld (I think?)

@janbogar AND FINALLY: my dad was a general contractor for much of his life and didn’t go to college and he’s one of the best men I know. “A plumber” is one of the most aspirational things a person can be (imagine life without them!!!!). I’d be proud to raise one. You show your bias too plainly.

@Simplicator this is off the cuff and silly but the larger point is: wealth taxes by themselves do not build dual power or change relations of production

@Simplicator no I don’t think a wealth tax is a part of the Prosperity Economics policy slate. Instead we propose the “family values tax” on gross revenue and employee payroll: the greater the physical distance between the location of purchase or worksite and the residence of the majority shareholders, the higher the tax — paid directly into municipality budgets.

@janbogar
By reacting so emphatically to the word "communism" without an ounce of curiosity, you signal that you too are easily manipulated by games of language. Instead of looking for the content of an idea, you treat your signifiers like sacred and pure objects capable of being reasoned about in and of themselves. If you chain yourself to ontology like this you will be made someone else's pawn.

@janbogar
- Specifically, I'm an an advocate for cooperatives, communes, ecological frames of thought, degrowth, abolition, and practices like democratic confederalism. I use "communism" as a word on mastodon with the exact same callousness that I joke about using "prosperity economics" – it's a word that a bunch of my friends have a positive association with for cultural contextual reasons, and I can employ it as a rhetorical tool to gain leverage for targeted political objectives.

@janbogar my guy. my guy. you are talking to an absolute stranger right now. would it kill you to ask a question or two about my priors before getting in my mentions talking to me like I'm a child?

Some points of order:
- I'm a transsexual. I will have no children.
- "Communism" is a floating signifier. That's literally the joke behind the original post. It can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. I am no advocate for central planning.

@janbogar I'm confused we were counting the victims of soviet imperialism as "victims of communism", so I figured we could count victims of american imperialism as "victims of capitalism".

Prosperity Economics is a bold new idea that urges America to go back to the basics. Ask any honest working-class American and they'll tell you what we already know: it's time to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, support small business, and replace stifling regulations with a nimble entrepreneurial spirit. How? Supply-Side Democracy. By making tactical government investments in neighborhood companies that use this state-of-the-art structure we can create jobs and revitalize our communities.

@NateProle tbh I consider communism and anarchism intrinsically linked here: the workers cannot be said to own the means of production if the people doing the work don't have the autonomy and independence to dictate their own labor.

@janbogar Oh no this sounds really bad, how have I never heard of this? Help me out here, can you quantify for me how this compares to USA imperialism, the looting of the global south, the genocide of the Americas, three centuries of chattel slavery, mass incarceration, etc?

@iakobsdesamos yeah I’ve discovered I can win just about any argument by letting the other person reveal what their favorite & least-favorite words are so I can dress my argument up with them