no lol
utopias are integral to motivating cultural shifts
dream of universal basic income, get political efforts toward subsidized wellfare and paid parental leave
nordic countries show this in a hundred years of history books from five countries
The nordic countries benefit from a small population and homogenous culture. It’s not a feasible model for large and diverse countries like the US.
That said, it is still an unsustainable model.
https://www.sustainabledevelopmentindex.org/
If you dig into the data, even with their high sdg ratings, they are in the red on many metrics and rank poorly in « spillover ».
https://dashboards.sdgindex.org/rankings/
And regardless, does not change the trajectory of human-induced mass extinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
The nordic models don’t have ubi, and the subsidized welfare/paid parental are only possible because of their small populations, cultural consensus (homogeneity), high taxes and high gdp.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_in_the_Nordic_countries
are you right in the head?? the first link you send is to the racist shit the most fascist government in nordic state’s history are up to - “our” politicians are out on the streets beating up refugees without getting smacked some sense into.
i’ll reply more when i see what other links you’re sending
Opening your comment with an ad hominem doesn’t inspire any serious response from me. Open borders is a neoliberal capitalist invention to drive profit margins and endless growth. I assume you are using fascist as an empty signifier rather than any concise definition. You’ll also need to cite your own sources for the claim about politicians, I’m not going to search for it.
be a stickler for rhetoric, i’ll say it how i see it when i read something wack.
idc for the continued argument about whichever topic you threw in there - open borders? so i’m dropping that. nothing personal, don’t take offense.
an assumption that i don’t mean fascist is ‘godtycklig’ here, the meaning is worth clarifying forever though:
fascism is the cultural uniformity of people as enforced by fearmongering and discrimination against marginalized groups of freethinkers by the sacking of the state apparatus for wellfare (education, healthcare and care in a broader sense) and direct communication between populace & governance (rn the situation antagonistic bothways with apathy from voters towards parties and detachement from party leaders who flaunt wealth in Gatsby style… in the 1980s the swedish prime minister was interviewed by literal children about the nuclear question and there was no denying even such journalists interviews & airtime.) Fascism occurs when capital institutions are situated above state apparatus (privatization of government, to begin with this occured most prominently from the IT sector in educational systems being digitized then other parts of wellfare and now collective traffic is at the whims of overpaid & underdelivering tech companies pandering AI features that break critical digital infrastructure for the first time in me family’s lifetime… that is a footnote for future reference, but not for any continued discussion in this thread.)
my sources are three generations around a family dinner table, friends and guests for the past decades.
now i’m closing the discussion from my end, but i am glad about getting some anecdotes written down & shared online =) ✌️
It sounds like you are agreeing to my original point in a round about adversarial way. Any ideology that presupposes humans as rational actors is destined for failure.
“Doesn’t inspire any serious response from me” - keeps fucking responding.
https://www.sustainabledevelopmentindex.org/time-series
for anyone reader’s interest: here’s an insider look into what the graph tells of the Nordic countries.
the reason all of Nordic countries were at the top was because after the 2nd world war we held the world’s highest class-mobility. to create educative children’s shows was the highest social status among artists. to go to ‘folkhögskolor’ was the norm. none of this wellfare was funded on a war-machine but high taxes (think 1/3 is taxes on anything) and Keynesian economics (think tax the rich, make being a worker into a social status symbol, reward loyal workers with a middle-class life like lifelong income stability and luxury goods like free vacation homes from the workplace. as thanks for loyalty. we called eachother “SJ barn” if we were children of a family working in swedish national railways, it became a status thing and a league of it’s own to work generationally for a workplace. strengthens bonds internally.)
now coming off of seventy something years of charismatic “left-wing” party leaders, our prime minister was assassinated in an alley one night in 1986. Olof Palme was dead. public shock. no one wanted to believe it.
i am at first glance surprised the chart shows Sweden peaking into net-neutral climate emissions per this index in 1993, because after the assassination we had the weakest government in Sweden’s history, but at second glance i am not surprised. it was the culmination of almost a century of “left wing” politics. Sweden was riding that wave before the unorganized “right-wing” realized opportunities in this weak government’s place. the following decades for Sweden was and has been increasingly cold “right-wing” politics. it took thirty years but now austerity politics has defunded and cut down the wellfare system to be on the level of efficiency of other countries and our climate politics is at the lowest it’s ever been. there is no political courage and no party politics: only individual politicians managing perception, vainly, in polls. Sweden is a polar opposite today in political government than in the wake of Olof Palme’s assassination. we see that reflect in the worsening emissions. i’d go on to say sweden is less diverse today when racists in government go out to say “we"ll pay you tax money to go back to where you came from, immigrants”(!!!) compared to our 1970s 1980s when television quota was “every fourth child shown on children’s television must be representative of marginalized people in swedish society” so we had a quota. americans cry about DEI whatever. we had that in the 70s 80s while educating about Iran Iraq and children forced into labour in chinese factories and breaking toxic gender stereotypes of “brutal boys” and “gentle girls”. read the documentation from someone who was there in the television inddustry: Malena Jansson - när bara den bästa TV:n var bra nog åt barnen. (when only the best TV was good enough for the children.)
USA to the west, Russia to the east, nordic countries in the middle - especially Sweden led that way. Olof Palme was everyone’s favourite prime minister.
as for Norway… they began drilling oil… once oppressed by Sweden & Denmark since just after the viking ages, suddenly financially strong and independent. it was good for them and they’re deserving of freedom from their colonized oppressors. i know there is more sea-based wind-power in norway these days than anywhere else and that the oil rigs are kept up to the highest scrutiny for pollution filters in the world. still, a stronger nordic economical union would lower that need for them to drill.
idk what happened for Finland to drift into emitting so much pollution. my educated guess is increased military tensions at their border to Russia since Olof Palme died. the european peace agreement between nordic countries and Russia was named after Olof Palme. thirty years later only scandals and tatters from the dropped ball that was de-militarization and peace activism on state levels. these states used to hold other states accountable peacefully while leading by example. it used to be that this one part of the world enforced other parts of the world to follow suit. now no such standard exists. our literal government handed Greta Thunberg over to Israeli torture themselves. i am not surprised if the current Prime Minister enjoys that and has paid any money for humiliating footage of her from the five days she was kept there. five days of swedish diplomats walking away from their in-person interviews with her and downplaying the degree of torture to family members through their teeth. Ulf Kristersson (of “the Liberals”, a party formerly named the Christian “Democrats”) & Jimmy Åkesson (of the Sweden “Democrats”, formerly of the literal youth nazi party) are crooks just like Nixon & Reagan & Bush. Not like Trump level.
welp They are not my politicians. nordic countries are at an all-time authoritarian & short-term-profit crisis after thirty years of weaker political leadership. i’d say we didn"t enter the network era gracefully, as per Manuell Castell’s terminology, after being the world’s finest states in the service era.
we are sparsely populated and have the world’s best agro-forestry policies in place. alot of room for improvement, like Lübeck style forestry…
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyggesfritt_skogsbruk
still collective traffic is in chaos from AI scalpers urging services like AI reading of bus- and trainstops. since the pandemic. unbearably bad pronounciation and insane costs. for the first time cameras are put up in public spaces and immense amounts of private security guards are patrolling. on collective traffic’s budget cost. no income, just expenditure for worse services. because refugees and racist politicians appealing to a “social media” radicalized society of sleepwalkers. yes, nordic country has sleepwalkers. safe big wellfare bubble. people still await Olof Palme’s return. that’s what right-wing fash propaganda is appealing to: the old socialist wellfare ways. yet it’s ironic and insincere.
“never!” they cry, as the first Muslim Democratic Socialist is elected mayor of New York in a landslide.
…in a landslide.
Actually, for me, it was shockingly close. How could an absolute fraud like the Independent have gotten so many votes? How could there be so many people in a huge city like that could make such a terrible decision, seemingly based on making a string of prior, terrible conclusions?
Weren’t many millions of dollars spent directly against Mamdani?
I’d say it’s one of the most hope inspiring things I’ve seen, personally — given the propaganda roulette we’re faced with in the MSM.
The mainstream media? Yeah, it’s getting fricken’ scary. The Washington post being taken over by Bezos, and CBS being recently taken over by… who is it again?
But you’re right, I wasn’t totally accounting for all the manipulated voting. More and more, it seems that late-stage capitalism really is a tyrant…
And the largest party in the Netherlands has a gay guy married to a guy from Argentina as leader.
Which doesn’t mean much, really, since the fascist party in Germany has a lesbian leader married to a lady from Sri Lanka who lives in Switzerland.
What does that change exactly? The Machine consumes all.
Proves the falsity of inevitability.
Hopelessness and cynicism is very hip and demonstrably incorrect.
Article “We must stop inequality before it collapses civilization”
topic “NY elected a socialist that will fight to lower inequality”
so, are you like agreeing with the comment that things are changing?
I’ve read the book. The analysis is great, it proposes some interesting ideas to possibly prevent collapse, but like the article states at the end, it’s unlikely. I would argue impossible, and communities should be organizing towards localization of production and self-sufficiency if they are to even survive.
unless inequality is vanquished
Despite the possibility of avoiding collapse, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects. “I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “We’re dealing with a 5,000-year process that is going to be incredibly difficult to reverse, as we have increasing levels of inequality and of elite capture of our politics.
Okay looking further into the article makes me retract caring about the part I quoted. I agree that we’re heading for the societal collapse stated there. The American empire is going to fall and I’m optimistic about that. Because, like Kemp says, that often improves the lives of the ordinary citizen.
It’s a global system, the world goes with it, and in the past collapses people had a place to escape to, a system to fall back on. We have no where to go this time.
We don’t need to go anywhere, we just need to take care of each other
Is your community transitioning away from global industrial agriculture to a more localized sustainable model? Populist sentiments and emotive statements don’t really solve problems.
Not with that attitude
just be aware that making claims about a highly contigent future (u dont know) is a decision that influences the outcome.
yeah that’s what I’m saying
I know just wanted to say it some more
Just today finished this podcast episode about that same topic
Citations Needed: Episode 157: How the “Culture War” Label Is Used to Trivialize Life-and-Death Economic Issues
“Let the Culture Wars Begin. Again,” The New York Times announces. “How the ‘Culture War’ Could Break Democracy,” warns Politico. “As The Culture Wars Shift, President Trump Struggles To Adapt,” NPR tells us. “Will Democrats Go on the Offensive in the Culture Wars?” Vanity Fair wonders.
Over and over, we’re reminded that so-called culture wars are being waged between a simplified Left and Right. Depending on who you ask, they tend to encompass issues under very broad categories: “LGBTQ rights,” “abortion,” “funding for the arts,” “policing,” “immigration,” “family values.” While there is some validity to the label of “culture war issue” – say, Republican opposition to an art installation, or tantrums over the gender of M&Ms – most of the time, the term is woefully misapplied.
Despite what much of the media claims, LGBTQ rights, police violence, abortion, and so many other issues aren’t just “culture war” fluff in the same league as the latest Fox News meltdown about a cartoon character. Nor are they both-sides-able matters of debate. They’re matters of real, material consequence, often with life-and-death stakes. So why is it that these are placed under the “culture war” umbrella? And what are the dangers of characterizing them that way?
On this episode, we discuss the vague nature of the term “culture war”; how this lack of clarity is weaponized to gloss over and minimize life-and-death issues like police violence and gender-affirming healthcare; and how the only consistent criterion for a “culture war” seems to be issues that impact someone other than the media’s default audience, i.e., a white professional-class man.
Our guest is The Real News Network Editor-in-Chief Max Alvarez.
Episode webpage: https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-157-how-the-culture-war-label-is-used-to-trivialize-life-and-death-economic-issues
And the center fights for the overton window, wherever it may be.
That would be endless growth. It is the culture now.
Have you considered forming a coalition government? That’s how much of Europe has been working for a while now. There’s usually a little bit of blue, red and green in the mix. Maybe some other colors too.
You’re speaking of the US?
In theory that’s what the federal system is supposed to be; states are the mix of red, white, blue and green. Though obviously it would be great if more states themselves were coalition govts, and if the feds didn’t have quite so much reach.
In a mostly theoretical sense. America can’t fix its politics without making some radical changes to the voting system, but I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.
The current system naturally gravitates towards a two-party system, which isn’t quite what I would consider a coalition government. If you have three or four parties actively negotiating about major decisions, that’s when you begin to see the benefits.
