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[Maximum Spin]

If it were that great an idea, we'd already be doing it. Farmers want hay from a source they can trust, it's that simple.
Everyone always thinks his own ideas are unique and amazing, until he tests them against reality. It's human nature. I don't see it as a bad thing, as long as there's some memory of humility and acceptance when an idea fails. When someone gets too attached to one unique, amazing idea that doesn't work, though... then he may end up blaming everyone else as the world continues to ignore it (because it doesn't work). If you'd just do this one weird trick, we could...!

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter. Nobody's going to get confused by a forum post and try to bag up his lawn clipping and mail them to a farmer. Farmers will continue to grow the hay that they or other farmers need in hayfields just fine. The instinct to try to come up with novel solutions is a laudable one - they just need to be grounded in an actual understanding of the facts.

The essential problem is this: as the theoretical upper limit of labor productivity increases, it becomes less and less efficient to even house, even feed, even have people who are operating at far below this level. The corollary of Ford's thesis that people who make Model Ts should be paid enough to afford them is: people who don't make Model Ts and don't contribute directly to making them don't need to be able to afford them.

Cool. It sounds like all the capitalists who exist only to parasitize the lion's share of global production whose level of labor productivity is close to zero would be the first order of concern right? That would be the obvious conclusion of what you're saying. Surely that's what you would pay your overwhelming attention to when you're "just making harsh observations" about so-called "useless people"?

The problem with all this discussion about who we can afford to let live is that we live in a post-scarcity society. This scene-making Maximum Spin does about how a janitor must starve because China raised the price of steel does not exist. There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON, material, social, or economic, that ANYONE cannot have their basic needs met. Again: *ABSOLUTELY NO REASON*, and no flowery pontification about this or that artifical economic construction should let anyone be distracted from that basic fact. All shortage is a result of capital extraction, and if it ends up that a janitor starves because China raises steel prices it is only a consequence of capital extraction, not some incontrovertible sequence of cause and effect.

To right-wingers like Maximum Spin capitalism is like religion. A janitor starving because the system decided he was worthless doesn't mean the system was constructed incorrectly. No, it is because the janitor had to starve, he must starve, like it was ordained by the laws of physics, even if right next door there are ten tons of food rotting away.

The self-satisfied, light-hearted treatisizing Maximum Spin does about how he believes other people are worthless because they do not serve his beloved system correctly (yes, even if couched in observatorial language out of cowardice) is not a sober-minded evaluation of economic consequences but a rationalization of an inhumane value system that would ostracize them from polite society if they were to express it plainly.

You read the entire thing backward again. I'm not surprised. It's fine, that discussion won't change anything in the real world either.

[Folly]

what happens to the farmers if we start growing our own food at home. Do we use them as compost when they inevitably go out of business?

Yes, we musn't forget about the poor starving farmers who can't afford to eat after everyone stops buying their food.

[hector13]

what happens to the farmers if we start growing our own food at home. Do we use them as compost when they inevitably go out of business?

Yes, we musn't forget about the poor starving farmers who can't afford to eat after everyone stops buying their food.

Of course.

As we all know, when crops ripen they develop a form of stasis until the moment the edible parts are removed from the inedible parts, such that they remain fresh until the inevitable heat death of the universe if kept, so to speak, on the vine.

Big Refrigeration is a conspiracy to make us ignorant of this, and have shell corporations selling home gardeners substandard seeds that do such things as rot or be susceptible to pests.

Man, is it any wonder that rural communities turn away from the left?

@bloop_bleep

Another one has found Max’s point and then assumed he was advocating for it.

Consider: Elon Musk is one of the most popular people on the entire goddamn planet and he is most famous for cost-cutting and firing people without severance and all that nonsense.

I also recall Mitt Romney in ‘08 (I think?) running for president feel entirely comfortable saying he enjoys firing people.

It might not be at the level Max postulated in which the people at the top are able to just unilaterally decide if the people at the bottom are below average contributors they can just basically ignore them, but it is well within possibility that people will accept cutting loose the “useless” if it’s “good for the economy” or some other empty platitude.

Part of this is that the people doing it are seen as successful and whatever they do must be right because they are successful as successful people would never do anything to risk their success, or just because people have enough ego they don’t think they are part of the “useless people” group.

Heck, there are some illegal immigrants in the US that think Trump won’t deport them because they aren’t criminals, or that they’ll even benefit from the guy making up that illegal immigrants are kidnapping and eating pets!

Trump was running on an actually Fascist platform and won the election ffs. Remember that when you think people will do what’s best for them.

[Maximum Spin]

It might not be at the level Max postulated in which the people at the top are able to just unilaterally decide if the people at the bottom are below average contributors they can just basically ignore them, but it is well within possibility that people will accept cutting loose the “useless” if it’s “good for the economy” or some other empty platitude.

It seems to me that that's actually happening, just by virtue of doing it sufficiently subtly and indirectly.

The example I gave of material price increases (which benefit importers and owners of facilities) being soaked up by the wages of the people with the least leverage in the system - the one bloop_bleep seems to think describes my ideal (?) and also seems to think I said it was some kind of magical inevitability instead of a choice employers make () - is what's happening, probably in a literal sense somewhere, right now.

ETA: and I didn't really want to address the ad hominem but I suppose it's not a derailment if I say it simply once, in a coda, and refuse to budge any further on it. At least I hope it won't be taken as such. I am not a conservative or a right-winger (I voted for Harris, and not even as a protest vote like some!). I disagree with a lot of people and gender identity has never been involved one way or another. I take statements as they're stated regardless of who states them.

[ChairmanPoo]

Elon Musk is one of the most popular people on the entire goddamn planet

I'd say most people loathe Musk. He just has a noisy personality cult.

[Duuvian]

It's using a "I am like you" strategy to try to convince you of something not in your interest. Think Chilo Chilonades. Also I blocked the charlatan so why am I still seeing it's posts? The universe truly is unfair to have to see such bad hearted argument. I liked it better when it could not use it's chatbot to feign competence.

"No." <- Maxspin without a chatbot

[Folly]

I'd say most people loathe Musk. He just has a noisy personality cult.

It's not about people liking him or disliking him, it's about people listening to him. Musk purchased the largest metaphorical soapbox on the planet, and now hundreds of millions of people are subjected to his nonsense whether they like it or not.

[hector13]

It's using a "I am like you" strategy to try to convince you of something not in your interest. Think Chilo Chilonades. Also I blocked the charlatan so why am I still seeing his posts? The universe truly is unfair to have to see such bad hearted argument. I liked it better when it could not use it's chatbot to feign competence.

"No." <- Maxspin without a chatbot

There are countless examples over the course of human history in which one group dehumanizing those they dislike has lead to atrocities committed against them.

Every journey begins with a single, inconsequential step. Ignore him if you must; leave it at that, for your own sake.

[lemon10]

Elon Musk is one of the most popular people on the entire goddamn planet

I'd say most people loathe Musk. He just has a noisy personality cult.

liked, admired, or enjoyed by many people or by a particular person or group.
"she was one of the most popular girls in the school"

A vast number of people like and admire him, even if significantly more dislike or loathe him. Thus, he is popular.
---
Musk is exceedingly disliked on the internet (which is generally global and liberal), but less so in America in general.

Still has a bad approval rating (as of september), but nowhere near what the internet thinks of him these days.
Apparently his approval rating is slightly higher then Taylor Swifts though.

[Random_Dragon]

There are countless examples over the course of human history in which one group dehumanizing those they dislike has lead to atrocities committed against them.

Every journey begins with a single, inconsequential step. Ignore him if you must; leave it at that, for your own sake.

Okay, with your constant playing devil's advocate for an alt-right troll and having started similar arguments with others on here, it's becoming blatantly obvious you're here to spread the same kinda bullshit.

[Duuvian]

It's using a "I am like you" strategy to try to convince you of something not in your interest. Think Chilo Chilonades. Also I blocked the charlatan so why am I still seeing his posts? The universe truly is unfair to have to see such bad hearted argument. I liked it better when it could not use it's chatbot to feign competence.

"No." <- Maxspin without a chatbot

There are countless examples over the course of human history in which one group dehumanizing those they dislike has lead to atrocities committed against them.

Every journey begins with a single, inconsequential step. Ignore him if you must; leave it at that, for your own sake.

Don't give me that mess. I didn't dehumanize a whole group. I live with far better people than MaxSpin even if they voted Trump and are MAGA. He doesn't represent them one fucking bit. He's like some space alien compared to them: a propagandist who is working against the interests of not only everyone here on these forums, but the people of my neighborhood who you are ever so quick to needlessly defend. I might not fit in or particularly like them for it, but I recognize two different categories here. I called it that because it is a nefarious actor that acts in a time of a global international cabal centered in hostile nations whom your weapons are actively killing the soldiers of, who are openly saying they are at war with you, and have clearly made big inroads in hybrid warfare. Please do understand the gravity of such things. I don't feel I have to be nice to such willing awful, and I think nor should I.

So why doesn't the block function work? Oh, I checked. It's because it requires a javascript. Well, I can fix that. That doesn't require being nice at all. So long TailSpin. I think I'll say "Oh it's that ol' TailSpin again posting after me. Has it been the two years before it's 70% against in the face of outrageous folly?"

[Random_Dragon]

So why doesn't the block function work? Oh, I checked. It's because it requires a javascript. Well, I can fix that. That doesn't require being nice at all. So long TailSpin. I think I'll say "Oh it's that ol' TailSpin again posting after me. Has it been the two years before it's 70% against in the face of outrageous folly?"

You have to go to your profile and find the settings for buddy and ignore lists, usually. Very annoying of this site that visiting some scumbag's profile shows an option to add them as a buddy but NOT an option to add them to the ignore list from there.

Needless to say I've already fixed that problem. We'll see how many more years it takes for Toady to finally notice Spin's constant neo-nazi horseshit, and I'm sure once they inevitably get themselves banned for pushing the envelope too far hector will probably escalate to make up for the sudden absence in brainless alt-right trolling.

[Toady One]

The OP isn't active, and the OP's rules are being broken, so I'm locking the thread.