dbingham

27 ms·

181.
by dbingham 4y ago
> That is a very naive view of how elections work, wouldn't you say? Pardon me, but I'm going to make a mild appeal to authority for a moment. I have run for office, served on a mayoral transition committee, worked closely with
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by dbingham 4y ago
> The issue with "one worker one vote" is that it assumes an egalitarian world that couldn't be further from reality. That egalitarianism already exists in every democracy in the world, and everyone just accepts it. The g
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by dbingham 4y ago
> Indeed, and now we know why they're not significant enterprises in any way. This is just factually incorrect. Mondragon has 80k employees and 12 billion euros in revenue. Equal Exchange has 120 employees, $70 million in revenue
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by dbingham 4y ago
Note, it's not a utopia - just better, not perfect. It's a refactor. An iteration on the existing system. > when say you envision the workers as the owners, how exactly does one change jobs then? Would I be forced to sell my
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by dbingham 4y ago
Because the goal of the system described above would be a more equitable distribution of economic gains (profits) and control - to avoid the concentration of wealth and power that comes from letting equity (capital) own and control business
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by dbingham 4y ago
Right, the fact that they are successful in Capitalism presents the possibility of building the entire economy around them. It would be a free market of independent businesses, but those businesses would be governed by the workers involved
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by dbingham 4y ago
Ignorance and self satisfaction, always a great combination those. I debated whether to even respond, but decided I would for those reading along. > Ha sure. Yes, worker cooperatives exist and are successful. Mondragon[1] is probably t
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by dbingham 4y ago
Sure, you could have a Free Market Socialist economy in which there are sectors of the economy managed by the state. And that there's a lot to tease out in terms of what level of the state is doing the management (municipal utilities
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by dbingham 4y ago
Yeah, this is real. Men still tend to get erased from the parental equation to a large degree. And this doesn't just affect stay at home dads. Much of the dialog around pregnancy loss and childloss seems to forget that there's
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by dbingham 4y ago
It's not just a spectrum from Libertarian Free Market to State Socialism. There are many other forms of economic system. Capitalism isn't even synonymous with free markets. Capitalism just speaks to who gets to own the businesses
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by dbingham 4y ago
I think I have a taste for absurdist humor, because a lot of these read like openings to fantastically funny satire. At least to me. With the exception of the Sci-Fi category -- those all read like high school pornographic fan fic. Honest
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by dbingham 4y ago
There is so much classism, elitism, and unsupported effect therefor cause reasoning in this comment I don't even know where to start with it. Which is ironic, because I am also generally against the idea of colleges basing their admiss
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by dbingham 4y ago
The argument is not that these other structures are perfect or free of problems, only that they are better for society on average than equity financed for-profit companies. Wikipedia and Mozilla are two examples. And yeah, they both have t
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by dbingham 4y ago
Yeah, there's definitely quite a bit of evidence. But also, they're better - not perfect. The issue you pointed to is real and does happen. But it's not as ubiquitous as "investor funding companies putting aside all ot
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by dbingham 4y ago
No. This is not how we build a better internet. You can try to say "These companies will be responsible, and about people." all you want. But if the fundamental structure is still a for-profit corporation with equity investors
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by dbingham 4y ago
And this right here is why it's taken us so long to figure out that we even have terrestrial aliens with cultures and languages. If you're not willing to believe it's possible, then you can't even begin to devise ways to
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by dbingham 4y ago
> I find it interesting that so many humans assume that since we can chat with one another, aliens somehow are supposed to show up and chat with us. It's all about us. If such a thing happened, the history of massively-different cul
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by dbingham 4y ago
I really want to get a Framework laptop, all their values seem very well aligned with what I want from a laptop maker, but until they offer a model with a larger display I'm stuck waiting. As a developer, I really need at least a 15&q
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by dbingham 4y ago
Can't read the paper, but the abstract seems to claim profits don't increase: > But consistent with our first set of results, these business managers show no greater ability to increase sales or profits in response to exporti
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by dbingham 4y ago
No, you can absolutely achieve that goal using other processes. However, in my experience I've found sprints to be the way that works best for the teams I've been on and those I've lead. But it all depends on the team and h
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by dbingham 4y ago
(Sigh) This is just a religious pronouncement in a religious war. There are many processes out there - not just sprint, kanban, water fall, or "no process". Pick the process that works for your team. As an engineer and an engin
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by dbingham 4y ago
It is a bit of a semantic dispute, but not an unimportant one. We are causing a major extinction event that is up there with the worst ones the Earth has experienced. That said, the end result is likely to be that we either go extinct or c
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by dbingham 4y ago
I feel like Fandom and Wikipedia provide a fantastic case study in the difference of outcome between non-profit, mission driven organizations and for-profit capital driven organizations. They were both founded by Jimmy Wales. They both hav
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by dbingham 4y ago
Given that Second Life is still around - just stagnated - what makes so many people think that now is the time the Metaverse is going to work? If this was going to work... wouldn't it be working right now in the existing version of it
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by dbingham 4y ago
I am not a lawyer, but I'm not aware of any such law. Public employee salaries are already publicly posted. You can look up the salaries of any public employee - including those at state universities, municipalities, etc Honestly, I
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by dbingham 4y ago
Non-profits aren't usually governed by their workers. They're usually governed by an elected or appointed board. What I'm describing is a system in which all businesses become what are currently known as "worker coopera
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by dbingham 4y ago
> First, the phenomenon you're referring to is "natural monopolies" which is a well understood situation which appears in every freshman-level Economics 101 class, but that only applies to certain industries. For instance,
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by dbingham 4y ago
I am of the opinion that the solution is Free Market Socialism: a market economy where the businesses are governed by their workers. Capital is allowed a reasonable, regulated return on its investment (which takes the form of loans, not eq
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by dbingham 4y ago
It's important to point out that this is a natural consequence of a market system, and it's exacerbated by allowing capital to rule those markets. Until we recognize that, we're not going to be able to fix it. One can't
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by dbingham 4y ago
Not just that, but it would be impossible to achieve. One study should never be taken as truth - but rather a single data point among many. It's only when we have many data points that give us a trend line that we can begin to say we

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