domain:furiouslyrotatingshapes.substack.com
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
Yes?
Never mind, I probably interpreted your post wrong.
Ioper
3d ago
Wait, Wikipedia says that KF and Konsum were specifically the predecessors of Coop?
Yes?
The Finnish grocery market is similarly dominated by the co-operative S Group, which has also attracted the attention of American progressives, but co-operatives have also always been specifically an alternative to not only standard private enterprise but also public ownership, and have been pushed by non-socialists, too, as such an alternative.
Absolutely and there was some criticism to that effect in the 19th century and early 20th century but the cooperatives and the workers movement got so intertwined that the criticism died down.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
Nobody has argued about embryonic stem cell research in a while. Although we have had left-coded arguments about HeLa cell line research.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I would bet on that being true, but not a complete explanation. I'd add:
A) Crime statistics don't capture all crime. A lot of stuff is never reported. Property crimes so minor that they don't merit the time because you know the cops won't do anything about it, like stuff stolen off your front porch or out of the back of a pickup truck. Scuffles that don't result in major injury. Things that happen to shitbirds while they are engaged in shitbird activities and would prefer not to involve the law. Sexual harassment or assault under gray circumstances. People observe or hear about those even if they aren't reported to police and it figures into their perceptions.
A1) Attempted crimes that don't rise to the level of being worth reporting or prosecuting. I see a guy hanging around my truck in the parking lot and yell hey can I help you and he runs off. The guy that follows my wife for a block or two so she goes into a store and he disappears. Those don't show up in statistics. This largely overlaps with what you are saying.
B) A lot of people are wildly paranoid, and will over-react to news reports of crimes. People will tell me that in a local small city "Two or three people get killed there every weekend;" if I look at the statistics 13 people were killed there in 2021, 9 in 2022, 17 in 2023, 4 in 2024. But that's enough that they can remember a story about a person getting shot, and it makes them start to worry about going downtown.
C) People who are victims of crime talk about it a lot, and typically write over anything they did to "deserve" it.
I'm maybe somewhere in the middle of Alexander, faceh, and you. I think the left has the progressive and center factions, and the right has the evangelical and libertarian/populist factions. Right now the populists are winning so hard you barely even hear the evangelical faction any more, but that doesn't mean the evangelicals have stopped existing. They're a minority, but they absolutely would push for a federal ban if they thought they would succeed. The moral framework of pro-life demands it, because if the neighboring state legalized murder the median person would be outraged by the decision and wouldn't care if someone else tried arguing about state's rights. That's why you have things like Texas outlawing traveling to another state to get an abortion. And if they succeeded in it, I doubt the pro-choice right would defect because of it.
Younger commenters seem to consistently under overestimate how long the South has been "Deep Red" territory: the legacy of the Southern Democrats held on at the state level well into the '90s. I am frequently amused at local Blue commenters in my Red state complaining about (perceived Red) state laws and policies that were actually enacted by the Blue team 40 years ago.
Was Manchin the last of that breed? He just left office this year.
Grant_us_eyes
3d ago
To give proper credit, the quote was originally from Shoe0nHead.
TequilaMockingbird
Brown-skinned Fascist MAGA boot-licker
3d ago
I'm reminded of something someone said here a week or two ago: Joe Rogan was the Democrats' Joe Rogan, they drove him and people like him away.
Was it this one?
https://www.themotte.org/post/2015/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/333055?context=8#context
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
3d ago
I bet 'perceived crime rates' includes observations of crime-adjacent activities that wouldn't ever be measured in 'actual' rates: the appearance of ubiquitous graffiti (see pictures of 80s subway cars), or of loitering ne'er-do-wells in the park isn't necessarily a wrong perception about crime rates.
You don't have to fully endorse the broken windows theory of (causing) crime to accept that frequent observations of broken windows can cause a true perception of rising crime rates.
SerialStateLineXer
3d ago
Gonzales v. Raich
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
No, I just meant why define capitalism in a way that only includes the good things it enables and not the bad.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
Wait, Wikipedia says that KF and Konsum were specifically the predecessors of Coop?
The Finnish grocery market is similarly dominated by the co-operative S Group, which has also attracted the attention of American progressives, but co-operatives have also always been specifically an alternative to not only standard private enterprise but also public ownership, and have been pushed by non-socialists, too, as such an alternative.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
I specifically contrasted his current platform with his old tweets.
gattsuru
3d ago
Cuomo's also just about the single worst political candidate available. People talk about 'scandals' like it was 'just' him being a gropey bastard, but the COVID nursing home policies killed thousands, possibly ten+ thousand.
New York City isn't the same Literal Worst in the way Cuomo is, but that's mostly because California and Newsom exist and can't rebuild a home after a fire. The punchline to all the Abundance Liberalism is either congestion pricing, or Eric Adams treating the invention of 'trash cans' like a major success.
And that's kinda the critical bit. There's a temptation among progressives to think of this as some failure of advertising or sufficiently innovative policy recommendation, but that's like trying to out-crude Trump. You're not going to beat socialists at making up policies with great advertising and 'novel' policy, and even trying to compete with them on those metrics will drive you to start making awful policies yourself.
The alpha centrists try to advertise themselves on is about actually improving the actual situation on the ground. But Cuomo and NYC (and Newsom and California) can't do that, either.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3d ago
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
3d ago
The cynical version of this is "If your anecdotal evidence flies in the face of their data, they are probably measuring the data wrong."
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
3d ago
Mamdani's platform, as presented, seems like a specific attempt to do what many class-first leftists have proposed doing and run on lunchbucket issues instead of idpol.
Lizzardspawn
3d ago
I was talking about the whole food chain. And that small and medium farmers are squeezed on both input and output is well known. And this is why I think that those kinds of experiments are worthy. The government has enough heft to shake things a bit.
Ioper
3d ago
I don't remember anyone even suggesting publicly owned grocery stores.
I believe KF - Konsum filled that role in Sweden. It wasn't technically publically owned but was so intimately tied with the workers movement that it filled much of the same role that a state owned enterprise would. Nowadays noone talks about it, especially due to the commercial failure and consistently higher prices of COOP. Dissatisfaction is mostly channeled toward some kind of market interventions like anti-monopolistic actions agains the largest commercial actors and in the more radical sphere, price controls.
Lizzardspawn
3d ago
Not a market theorist but rent seeking is extracting value and not generating. I have never seen consumers being better off when there is lack of interoperability, DRM, vertical integration, walled gardens, monopolies, oligopolies, monopsonies, drm on printer ink and other anticompetitive practices.
So it is not the best use of the capital in the society.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
3d ago
I think that Mamdani's middle-class/upper-middle-class appeal may in large part be simply due to the Mr. Smith Goes To Washington idea of a honest, non-corrupt outsider against a corrupt machine creature.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
I am opposed to video games, porn, weed, fornication, rap music, and sports betting. I can’t say I have anything against DnD but I also don’t know very much about it and I’m certainly willing to be opposed to fictional entertainment in principle.
Now the difference is nobody believes that republicans will put me in charge of regulating these things.
Iconochasm
2. Bootstrap the rest of the fucking omnipotence.
3d ago
Yes, and they too would be alienated by the tradcon message that puts 100% of the blame for the decline in marriage on men.
"100%" is doing a lot of work there. I see a lot of "Women often suck, but you can only work on yourself, so fix that first", and it seems like it's resonating fairly well. There's a reason Peterson blew up with "Clean your room". "Get good" is a message young men are primed to be ready for.
hydroacetylene
3d ago
Rubio, Abbott, and Youngkin can all foreseeably unite the three factions with the always-second-string religious right. Desantis is also a strong maybe on that front.
I don’t see Vance doing this, I don’t see Cruz, I don’t see Hawley.
Exactly. Maybe there’s something analogous in the way certain states recognize different corporate structures? There are only a few which allow forming anonymous LLCs.
More options
Context Copy link