regardless of intent, the upper classes have material conditions that condition their behavior. Regardless of how they come off upon meeting, they still would rather have subjugation and hold their position than work to create an egalitarian society.
Generally it's suggested to keep a consistent identity on HN as it suggests more reasonable discourse when people understand their actions follow them. Discourse is fun, rational discourse with consistency is what makes this site amazing.
> Simple reliance on a profit model for housing is never going to adequately meet housing needs.
Can you give something to justify that statement, something more than just a bare assertion? To me, it looks like reliance on something other than the profit motive (that is, rent control) is what's causing the problems here.
A start would be the pervasiveness of homelessness throughout the history of the United States as contrasted with its abolition in the USSR and its dramatic return with post-soviet privatization.
At least in the USSR you were guaranteed housing as opposed to the United States where homelessness is largely criminalized while the homeless are offered little support and in fact regularly have their lives upended because they're considered an eyesore.
Why don't you start a communist commune? You can do that in a capitalist system. You can't set up a capitalist commune in a communist system because they'll put you in the gulag.
Actually you should check out the long history of western capitalist supported right wing death squads that have been sent to break up communist governments.
And how does that answer jules' point? You sound like you're just looking for a chance to spew your talking points, rather than actually having a conversation with us.
My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society. Perhaps you should revisit the cold war. In addition, a commune within a capitalist society would still be reliant on the labor of an external, exploited proletarian class. Communism is internationalist. Ultimately this is the failure of first world social democratic programs that provide decent gains for their working classes but do so at the expense of oppressed peoples in the global south.
Referring to them as talking points without refuting them sounds a whole lot like trying to dismiss the argument without dealing with the contents. Don't get upset and fall back on procedural obfuscation if you're trying to have a conversation with me.
> My point is that Jules is wrong that capitalists will permit you to set up a communist society.
The non-communist countries tried to sabotage the communist ones, true. (And vice versa - a cold war is like that.) That is not at all the same as saying that, within a capitalist countries, the capitalists will not permit you to set up a commune. Your argument (and link) therefore do not actually address jules' point at all.
> In addition, a commune within a capitalist society would still be reliant on the labor of an external, exploited proletarian class.
How does that address jules' point (or even mine)?
> Communism is internationalist. Ultimately this is the failure of first world social democratic programs that provide decent gains for their working classes but do so at the expense of oppressed peoples in the global south.
How does that address jules' point (or even mine)? Starting a commune in the US doesn't exploit the oppressed in the global south whatsoever.
This is why I say it looks like you're just looking to spew talking points. You're saying a lot, but it's not relevant to the subject.
Would you please refrain from doing ideological flamewar on HN? Surely you're aware it's the exact opposite of what we're trying to have here? I realize other people were doing just that, but that's all the more reason not to feed it.
1. Then perhaps you'd be happier if I were to point you in the direction of The Black Panthers or MOVE or any of the leftist victims of the COINTELPRO operations.
2 & 3. What I'm trying to help you understand is that a commune within a capitalist state that doesn't challenge the structures of capitalist society is not a communist project.
Please calm down, it's clear you're getting upset. I'm trying to help you understand.
As the site guidelines make clear, you can't use HN primarily for ideological battle, regardless of ideology. Since that's clearly all you've been doing with this account, we've banned it. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.
Universities have vastly expanded the percentage of their budget that goes towards administrative and brand building roles. Redistributing it towards teachers and grad students would be a good start. In addition, public universities could receive greater public funding.
There’s a natural connection between the two: you need qualified people to teach students and many of the best students are looking for research experience in labs doing real work. Given what tuition runs these days, any place which doesn’t have those is going to see students passing for other institutions.
The problem isn’t pairing the two but generations of overhead growth combined with a decline in the federal funding which used to support researchers, both of which mean compensation has fallen behind in real value.
Researchers are extremely unqualified to be teachers. That's because researchers are good at researching.
And this skill has very little overlap with teaching undergraduate students.
And on the other end, a fairly small percentage of students end up doing any research in college.
In an ideal world, researchers would research, and people who specialize in teaching would teach.
You do NOT have to be some cutting edge leader in your field to teach undergrads. Simple skills, like being an engaged and interesting speaking are way way way more important than how many papers you've published.
In my opinion and experience, the process of teaching itself makes you a much better researcher. People can get bored doing research, epecially if it is primarily solo research. Plus, teaching forces you to learn a subject much more thoroughly than you would otherwise. And if you want to expand your research to a slightly different topic, teaching that topic can give you a lot of knowledge and confidence in that topic. I feel like teaching+research institutions do better research than pure research institutions.
My point is the research and teaching are orthogonal skills.
It is certainly possible for someone to be both a good researcher and a good teacher.
I am just saying that I don't care how good of a researcher they are. The only thing I care about is how good of a teacher they are.
So let's judge the teachers based SOLELY on their teaching skills, and not have writing papers have anything at all to do with whether they are hired as a teacher.
You have no understanding of the marxist conception of base - superstructure relations. If marxists thought class determinism was as simple as it is then they would be baffled why revolution hadn't taken place long ago.
