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This has to be one of the most heavily-couched calls for Marxism I've seen all week. "Democratic deployment" will still suffer from well-applied demagoguery, t

This has to be one of the most heavily-couched calls for Marxism I've seen all week. "Democratic deployment" will still suffer from well-applied demagoguery, the people themselves are still prone to manipulation - even when their choices are abstracted away in a command economy.

wffurr 9y ago
Did I deliberately avoid the M-word? Maybe. A solid counter to demagoguery is economic justice and education that encourages critical thinking. People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk.
- smsm42 9y ago
  Should I read this as "solid counter to socialist propaganda is actually building socialism"? If so, I wholeheartedly agree. As somebody who actually lived under socialism (until it collapsed), I am inoculated against it forever. However, I think this is way too cruel punishment for a weak souls swayed by a false promise of socialist demagoguery about "justice" and "education" and inevitably finding themselves in abject poverty, monumental totalitarian tyranny and thorough thought-control likes of which had never been seen by humanity before. I'd recommend learning from other's mistakes instead, unfortunately 20th century has enough material for that.
  - wincy 9y ago
    Hey, I just wanted to thank you for articulating some of the thoughts I've had more eloquently than I can or have time to do. It's good to see HN not just sounding like an echo chamber and seeing someone speak up against socialism/communist sentiments commonly expressed here.
    - wffurr 9y ago
      Is it really all that common? HN often feels like a techno-utopian libertarian echo chamber to me. Maybe if we both feel this way, it's actually a balanced group? Or maybe it just comes in waves depending on the topic.
- jerf 9y ago
  "People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk." You seem to have disproved your own thesis, then, since there aren't that many people who have their health, shelter, or food directly affected by this race for the attention economy. (Yes, I said "aren't that many" and not "zero", but it's still not that many.) What basis do you have for believing a centralized government with the definition of all morality and power adhering within it wouldn't simply turn the full force of this engineering on its citizens? After all, isn't it just that important for us to use these tools to maintain proper consciousness? If you don't believe that, don't you think the leadership will? And don't we actually have historical (USSR, to the extent it was technologically possible) and modern regimes (China, do an internet search on "china citizen score") doing just that right now? Before walking down that trail, you ought to make very, very, very sure it leads where you think it does, because several hundred million people who have walked it before you have discovered it doesn't.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    there aren't that many people who have their health, shelter, or food directly affected by this race for the attention economy That seems highly questionable to me. Large numbers of people in retail and service industries disrupted or threatened by technological change are arguably impacted by it.
    - jerf 9y ago
      Tone: Honest. How does attention economy abuse impact people in retail and service especially? (I get that the internet at large is impacting them immensely, and the list of such people and professions hardly stops there, but I don't immediately see the connection between them and attention abuse specifically.)
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        I'm probably casting ym net a bit too wide, so as to encompass all non-specialist internet-driven retail. Amazon uses these techniques a lot, I feel, albeit in a more subtle way. But I agree that's outside the scope of the original article's journalistic focus.
anigbrowl 9y ago
The foundation of Marxism is public ownership, not a centralized command economy. Other approaches exist, eg participatory economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics
- snerbles 9y ago
  One can argue that public ownership necessitates central planning in practice. My cursory searches have failed to find a sovereign state that has successfully implemented parecon. Feel free to cite a counterexample.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    One can argue anything, but so what? I don't think anyone has even tried implementing ParEcon so far, as it's a relatively new approach and has some problems of its own. My point is that central planning is not the desideratum of the left that some people here are claiming to be.

wffurr 9y ago

Did I deliberately avoid the M-word? Maybe. A solid counter to demagoguery is economic justice and education that encourages critical thinking. People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk.

smsm42 9y ago
Should I read this as "solid counter to socialist propaganda is actually building socialism"? If so, I wholeheartedly agree. As somebody who actually lived under socialism (until it collapsed), I am inoculated against it forever. However, I think this is way too cruel punishment for a weak souls swayed by a false promise of socialist demagoguery about "justice" and "education" and inevitably finding themselves in abject poverty, monumental totalitarian tyranny and thorough thought-control likes of which had never been seen by humanity before. I'd recommend learning from other's mistakes instead, unfortunately 20th century has enough material for that.
- wincy 9y ago
  Hey, I just wanted to thank you for articulating some of the thoughts I've had more eloquently than I can or have time to do. It's good to see HN not just sounding like an echo chamber and seeing someone speak up against socialism/communist sentiments commonly expressed here.
  - wffurr 9y ago
    Is it really all that common? HN often feels like a techno-utopian libertarian echo chamber to me. Maybe if we both feel this way, it's actually a balanced group? Or maybe it just comes in waves depending on the topic.
jerf 9y ago
"People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk." You seem to have disproved your own thesis, then, since there aren't that many people who have their health, shelter, or food directly affected by this race for the attention economy. (Yes, I said "aren't that many" and not "zero", but it's still not that many.) What basis do you have for believing a centralized government with the definition of all morality and power adhering within it wouldn't simply turn the full force of this engineering on its citizens? After all, isn't it just that important for us to use these tools to maintain proper consciousness? If you don't believe that, don't you think the leadership will? And don't we actually have historical (USSR, to the extent it was technologically possible) and modern regimes (China, do an internet search on "china citizen score") doing just that right now? Before walking down that trail, you ought to make very, very, very sure it leads where you think it does, because several hundred million people who have walked it before you have discovered it doesn't.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  there aren't that many people who have their health, shelter, or food directly affected by this race for the attention economy That seems highly questionable to me. Large numbers of people in retail and service industries disrupted or threatened by technological change are arguably impacted by it.
  - jerf 9y ago
    Tone: Honest. How does attention economy abuse impact people in retail and service especially? (I get that the internet at large is impacting them immensely, and the list of such people and professions hardly stops there, but I don't immediately see the connection between them and attention abuse specifically.)
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      I'm probably casting ym net a bit too wide, so as to encompass all non-specialist internet-driven retail. Amazon uses these techniques a lot, I feel, albeit in a more subtle way. But I agree that's outside the scope of the original article's journalistic focus.

anigbrowl 9y ago

The foundation of Marxism is public ownership, not a centralized command economy. Other approaches exist, eg participatory economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

snerbles 9y ago
One can argue that public ownership necessitates central planning in practice. My cursory searches have failed to find a sovereign state that has successfully implemented parecon. Feel free to cite a counterexample.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  One can argue anything, but so what? I don't think anyone has even tried implementing ParEcon so far, as it's a relatively new approach and has some problems of its own. My point is that central planning is not the desideratum of the left that some people here are claiming to be.