I’m been slowly migrating all my computers over to immutable distros, either silverblue or universal blue.

Once you get used to the container paradigm, you can do all your customization and easily copy it over to other machines without fear of breaking anything.

Plus, having automatic updates and knowing that you’ll always boot into a reliable machine, it’s the best.

Once you have distrobox set up with an arch container, you have access to the aur no matter what distro ypu’re running.

This is suuuper cool, but looks like having linux+amdgpu limits me to the cloud option.

I supposed this is bc we don’t have a DirectML equivalent yet.

Being trans is not a mental illness but let’s not encourage stigma around mental illness either.

Cis people with mental illness are valid

Trans people with mental illness are valid

Mentally healthy trans people are valid

Mentally healthy cis people are valid

Communists today are using all the same materials and asking people to read works like The State and Revolution, the Manifesto, and so on. I’m not sure what you think is so different about messaging today from the messaging in the past.

The difference is that we live in the present, not the past, and the present is a lot different than the past.

The communist manifesto was brilliant because Marx and Engels wrote it specifically for the average working class people of their time. It wouldn’t have worked if they wrote it for people almost 200 years past.

Let go of the history and tradition. I’m not asking anyone to write a new communist manifesto of the 21st century, but talk to people like you live in 2023, not a cult of tradition. Embrace modernity.

but the fact that most people in the west have been generally happy to keep capitalism and ignore its problems

Lol, no. Open your eyes up, Westerners hate capitalism, they mostly just don’t know yet that it’s capitalism at the source of their problems. People are exhausted at the idea of the iPhone 16 Max Pro Plus X Series, they just want to make a fair living wage to provide for their family, and have time to spend with their family. If you can offer a home, healthy food, medical care, and education at 32 work hours per week, you are sold to almost everyone in the US.

Your two quotes are referring to two different survey counts. Let me explain how this works: it’s impossible to get an exact count down to every individual, you survey a population sample and then make estimates based on your population sample. This can be done by both government and private agencies.

Here are the two different surveys from the article broken down:

The NSSO survey, done by the Indian government, not officially released, but leaked to the media. All this article tells us about the results of this survey is that “poverty had increased”. No years, no numbers, no percentages. Just three words.

The CMIE survey, done by a private company, used by the World Bank. We at least have the numbers for this survey, which says poverty has more than halved from 2011 to 2019. However, the World Bank already assumed that poverty would be decreasing rapidly, and put out global poverty estimations based on rapidly decreasing poverty before

When you quoted the World Bank as saying

The global poverty headcount in 2018 is revised slightly up from 8.7 to 8.9 per cent

That was referring to CMIE survey results being less optimistic than original World Bank projections.

I did make a mistake, I didn’t credit you for the NSSO survey, which did indeed support your point. I think that’s why you misread the conclusion of the CMIE survey. I think it’s sus af the government won’t release it, but I’m also a scientist. All we have from it is, “poverty had increased”. Imagine I presented to you a new article that said nothing about poverty rates in China except “poverty had increased”, how much would you value that piece of information?

Let’s be honest, you would’ve been saying that communist messaging sucks when the Soviet revolution happened too.

Absolutely not, and the Communist Manifesto was a brilliant piece of writing. These are communists who knew how to speak to people’s frustrations and desires.

So I amend my claim, I was wrong. Communists in the past were great at messaging, communists alive today suck at messaging.

No, my argument is that you misread it, because you were trying to use it as proof that poverty was getting worse. The article said nothing about that.

I think using sources that you’ve misread and are quoting to incorrectly makes for bad messaging.

People can’t read your mind and it never comes across that you believe any of these things. What you come across as a defender of the current capitalist system. So, perhaps you too could think about better messaging. Frankly, you just come across as a total dick, and that naturally brings out the worst in people.

Yeah, I am a dick, but also the only position you were making me defend was that communist messaging sucks. It’s way too easy to defend that communist messaging sucks.

So, if you think that the only way forward is global communism, then you have to ask yourself why people in the west are so afraid of communism and whether your own messaging is feeding into that fear.

It’s because communist messaging sucks.

No, I think we should read an article thoroughly before misquoting it and looking really silly.

Oh, I think it’s very sus India won’t publish numbers, but that’s not the point. The point is that I think it’s hilarious that you tried to use it as proof to make your point, when you probably skimmed it too fast because you straight read it wrong.

Especially when you’re trying to cultivate a perception that you’re a well-informed person, that mistake is just extra embarrassing.

What you evidently don’t realize is that you’re looking in a mirror here. You are smug and arrogant, you refuse to even consider the possibility that you might be wrong even though you openly admit to having superficial knowledge of the subject.

Wrong about what, in particular? I think communism is the only chance our species has at a future. I think China does a lot of good things, particular in the spirit of communism, and has communism to thank for many of its particular successes. I believe in global labor solidarity, US laborers and Chinese laborers, together against the capitalist classes. I think your brand of messaging is working against that goal.

Pretty much all the party members come from working class, and they regularly engage with the people in their communities, and do actual community work. Party members are even on the frontlines when there are natural disasters.

Many US politicians come from working class, are almost always found on the front lines of disasters, and frequently engage with communities in town halls. This is not impressive stuff, it’s like baseline politician duty.

While you smugly blame all the problems on USSR on communism, the reality is that it was under siege from your empire throughout its whole existence.

I love the shifting rhetoric where sometimes communism is stronger and better than capitalism, and sometimes it’s weaker. And don’t pretend the USSR and China weren’t/aren’t also imperialist.

If a country finds a compromise that allows it to exist within capitalism then it’s not real communism.

100% true, the only way to real communism is global communism. Which means if you want real communism, you have to begrudgingly shift your focus from “West bad”, to “how do we liberate the laborers of the West to overthrow their capitalist overlords”, which means better pro-communism messaging.

The one that says that Indian government refuses to publish the full numbers.

I just love that you misread the numbers to reach the conclusion you wanted, and not the real conclusion. And when I call you out, without a beat you pivot to “oh actually it’s that we don’t have the Indian government’s numbers”.

This is apex “communists are not capable of admitting they could make a mistake”.

It’s okay man, we’re all just human, we all make little mistakes sometimes. I’ve certainly apologized for mistakes on this site before.

I changed my mind, I might read the book, it looks AMAZING. Remember how my original point was the communists are bad at messaging because they can’t handle any criticism, they’re super defensive, and they blame everything on the West? It’s an entire book dedicated to proving my point.

Workers already took power in China when the revolution happened. The government in China is by the workers and for the workers. You only have to look at the composition of the party to see that.

Biden was a working class man, looks like the US is run by the working class.

China isn’t run by the billionaire class. In fact, billionaires regularly being sentenced to jail and even executed is another clear difference between China and actual capitalist societies where such things simply don’t happen.

Very true a lot of them are executed, but also China loves it’s executions, and the US hardly executes anyone anymore.

Sending them to jail is good, better than the US, but why even allow billionaires to exist? You still have very poor people and the wealth is being gobbled up by the 500 greediest.

All your claims have been debunked in detail by main people.

I’m so debunked, let’s not forget your best bangers: “westoid cesspool”, a clown face 🤡, posting a source that you interpreted completely wrong, and giving me a whole book because you can’t answer a question.

Here’s the reality of poverty in India https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/just-how-poor-is-india-10-per-cent-says-the-world-bank-85225

Would you mind explaining which data in particular you are looking at? According to your source, poverty rate in India has dropped from 22.5% in 2011 to 10% in 2019.

Why is India not having the same kind of rapid increase, why is it getting worse there

It’s not getting worse, it’s getting much better, just at a worse rate than economists projected. I’m baffled that you can misunderstand a 5-minute read so badly.

, why did capitalism create the same problems in post Soviet countries? I love how you keep dodging these questions here.

I don’t think even the most pro-Capitalist person would try to tell you that Capitalism can fix all the problems of a collapsed communist society in only 30 years.

Here’s an entire book you can read on the subject if you were genuinely interested in this question https://redletterspp.com/products/the-east-is-still-red

I’ll see if I can pirate an audiobook, I’m not interested enough to read a book on it. I read some summaries and it looks like massive overkill for a really simple direct question. Maybe you should just stop dodging this question: how will workers take back the power and wealth of the billionaire class?

What I actually said is that the standard of living is going up in China while it’s not going up in capitalist countries. If China was capitalist then you’d expect the same thing to happen as it does everywhere else where there is capitalism. China would look something like India right now.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country

https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

Numbeo is ranking India at #56, China at #65 for quality of life index.

China is notable for having a recent rapid increase. It’s easier to have a big delta number, when your starting number is so low.

Once you show me somebody doing it better than China then we’ll talk.

According to Numbeo there are still 64 counties doing better on the quality of life index than China.

And nobody is expecting them to voluntarily give up wealth, taking the wealth away and nationalizing things is the job of the government. Of course, you refuse to accept the fact that working class holds power in China and that’s what your fallacious view of China is premised on.

Working class holds what power? Tencent and Alibaba aren’t owned by its workers. Why would the government ever decide to give up its joint wealth and power with the billionaire class? What could the workers possibly do to hold them accountable?

It’s pretty dishonest to claim ChInA Is DoInG StAtE CaPiTALiSM when it’s pretty clear that China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly. If China was doing what you claim it’s doing then we’d see the same results as we see under actual capitalism. It’d look like India today.

Circular reasoning: communism increases standard of living, China’s standard of living is going up, therefore China is communist, therefore communism increases standard of living. This is a logical fallacy.

China’s economic boom correlates to its involvement in the capitalist world economy. It’s very easy to argue that the more China does capitalism, the more wealthier it gets, the better off the Chinese citizens.

India is not doing quite as well as China, but it’s still seem a very dramatic decrease in poverty, especially if you go by the “$1.90/day” mark, which is not enough imho, but it’s the one you choose to go by: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/september-2023-global-poverty-update-world-bank-new-data-poverty-during-pandemic-asia

To say “China is basically the only place in the world where standard of living is going up significantly”, you’re “basically” just straight-up wrong.

Point of communism is to have an equal society, but the question is how you get there from where we are now. Apparently anarchists believe that magic happens as opposed to this being a process the way things work in the real world.

So the path to communism is paved with mega-corps and billionaires? What do you expect them to do, voluntarily give up all their wealth and possessions when it’s time for the communism to begin?

Meanwhile, China has to exist within the global capitalist system created by the west after WW2. That means having to participate within the global economy and engage with capitalism.

So China is speedrunning late-state Capitalism with private mega-corps like Tencent and exploiting its own cheap labor by giving them out to western capitalists so they can enrich their own billionaires. Of course, your excuse, as I already said it would be much earlier in the thread, “it’s the West’s fault”.

Isn’t that peak chauvinism of you, removing all agency from the communist people because “the West is forcing them to”?

Pointing at the fact that there are 500 billionaires in China as some sort of a gotcha

What is the point of communism?

Your source does not contradict mine, it just defines “poverty” as “less than $1.90 a day”, which actually my source already covered.

This is a country with 500 billionaires, you can’t do better than “you aren’t poor as long as you make $2 a day”?

So communism is when your billionaire factory owner tells you, “Here are your 2 bucks for the day, now you aren’t poor anymore”.

colonizers live like parasites off the backs of the rest of the world, and majority of westerners are perfectly happy with the arrangement.

100% true, Western capitalists have been exploiting cheap Chinese labor, and labor of other Asian countries, for decades, plus stripping them of natural resources. With the consent of their (according to you - Communist) governments. This is where the government should be regulating labor, tariffs on imports and exports, and regulating involvement of foreign corporations. Instead, these governments are colluding with Western capitalists to enrich themselves.

A country that’s seen biggest poverty reduction in human history, where practically everyone owns their home, and people see their lives improve dramatically each and every year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/56213271

A very dramatic improvement, but about a quarter of China’s population still makes less than $5.50 a day, and $600 million make just $154 a month. Meanwhile, China has about 500 billionaires.

If communism looks like a huge number of people living on less than $5.50 a day, while billionaires still exist, I’m really going to dislike communism for the exact same reasons I dislike capitalism.