Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengists) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
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Econ 101 types are so insufferable and are often the C+ student in Econ 101.
Supply and demand only works in perfectly competitive markets where all parties have perfect information (literally taught in Econ 101).
Companies know this, and do everything in their power to ensure this doesn't happen, because any surplus due to assymetries flow to the participant with the advantage (also taught in Econ 101).
Worst of all is that negative and positive externalities are also taught in Econ 101 but they are almost never mentioned by these types.
TL;DR For positive/negative externalities: Company produces pollution, pollution negatively affects the economic value of things outside of the company's business (e.g. kills fish in rivers), company most efficient process should be produce less at higher price.
This means the supply/demand curve can be shifted with taxes (called Pigovian taxes) to correct the supply/demand curve so it accurately reflects the value of broader society. Conversely a healthy population is more productive so subsidising healthcare makes sense since creates more benefits than the benefit of the consumer and entity providing it.
Taxes and subsidies can be an effective tool to adjust the supply/demand curve to maximise the benefit of society as a whole in many cases when used aggressively enough.
You can effectively solve climate change pretty easily by taxing emissions from fossil fuels and providing the entire amount as energy subsidies. This way renewables get a massive advantage from the energy subsidies at no cost to the tax payer. You can count on the market to min/max based on the rules.
These types still go "Hurr durr, bUt ThE dEaDwEiGhT lOsS".
Alright now that you got me started I'm going to crash out for a little bit.
I fucking hate how Econ-101 types conflate the economic definition of rationality with the general definition of rationality.
This, combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic rationality is in the first place forms their justification for looking down on people's "irrational" decisions, which are basically anything other than selfish asshole behaviour.
First, economic rationality simply means that given some set of choices, you are able to order them in terms of their utility, and that your decisions are consistent with this ranking. Utility, as every economist stresses, is entirely dependent on every individuals needs and wants, and there is a wealth of research which shows that people enjoy charitable decisions, like shouting a meal for a friend, or volunteering.
Even then, it is well known (and immediately taught) that rationality is basically impossible to hold in reality, and this most people are economically irrational. E.g. for a fast food set of a burger, fries, and drink, when comparing two items I prefer burger > fries, fries > drink, and drink > burger, which forms an impossible order of utility.
And even for seemingly frivolous/trashy decisions like gaudy designer bags made by poorer people, there is extensive economic evidence that the resulting recognition of wealth from their peer groups results in net positive effects such as promotions/better networks. This is no different conceptually to the "quiet luxury" purchases of rich people - the only difference is that only other rich people are able to recognise the "simple" $700 plain t shirts. In either scenario, depending on the individual, there is a strong case for these decisions to be "rational".
On a related note, these types also play a few games related to the prisoners dilemma, and believe they are the experts on matters of public policy (in most cases, that the tragedy of the commons is inevitable and we should give up).
Except that the prisoner's dilemma is a stupid and unrealistic thought experiment. Elinor Ostrom won a fucking Nobel prize by documenting extensive evidence that if everyone in a community is properly represented and co-ordinate, the tragedy of the commons does not occur; the tragedy of the commons does occur if any participant wields too much socio-economic power.
Nice, let's I'm going to nerd out a bit more.
I'm happy you mentioned game theory since it has also a naïve econ type issue. The prisoner's dilemma is a bad example of game theory since the game is only played one time. One time a bunch of guys decided to do a game theory tournament where they made bots play tons of games against each other and see which one does best. To the researcher's surprise the sample "Tit for tat" approach was the best, it just did whatever the opponent did last.
And of course people sometimes conflate Economics with hard science when it's a social science. We can't just make an alternate universe and run an experiment to see which policy creates the most GDP growth or whatever people are measuring.
Also, assuming homo economicus is an accurate representation of humans just doesn't work, but it does make the math a lot simpler. It's the issue with economic models is that a simple model doesn't accurately reflect society and a complex model, although a better simulation, is a lot harder to analyse and draw conclusions from. The superhuman homo economicus can assign monetary value to everything, is aware of all choices and can rank them accurately according to each choices utility. Nobody does that, everyone makes a shit purchase every now and then.
Economics is great but it's soooo incredibly oversimplified to the point where people are making claims that are opposite to what economics is actually teaching.
Btw, have you checked out Money & Macro on YouTube/Nebula? It's a channel from a professor in economics and he's really good at getting into the economic nuances of current events.
Econ dork detected, deploying Econ joke:
"Hey there Mr. Powell, how's your soda?"
"... My beveridge is unfortunately rather flat..."
Apologies for my pointed tone, but the demotion of Economics as a lesser science due to lack of controlled experiments is a pet peeve of mine.
Economists do run experiments, or work very hard to try to hard quasi-like experiment designs.
Angrist Krueger won a Nobel for showing that increasing minimum wage actually increases overall employment, by utilising data in border towns in NJ/NY where the differing laws across state lines constituted a natural experiment.
Amy Finkelstein won a Bates medal (basically a baby Nobel) for her work in health policy, which involves being the lead investigator in coordinating the large scale Oregon Health Insurance Experiment that randomly assigned participants with health insurance.
It's even possible, though much more difficult, on the macro side. Scholars such as Emi Nakamura look at high-frequency data of bond markets to see how markets and the economy respond to the actions of the Federal Reserve.
More recently, “General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence From Kenya” won the Frisch medal for conducting randomised, large scale cash transfers to low income, isolated rural communities, where due to the isolation, could make it arguably similar to UBI.
Actually good Econ channels:
Money and Macro
TLDR News (though their non UK/global coverage is a bit sus)
National Bureau of Economic Research (live streams economic research conferences, wouldn't recommend actually watching but you can get a feel for what Econ actually does)
Unlearning Economics (maybe only 70% correct, but very engaging and not as "mainstream")
Shit tier channels (at least for Econ):
Economics Explained
Kurzgesagt
Infographics Show
More recent greatest hits from 'Economy Understanders':
What. Is. A. Tariff?
(Arguably this is taught in MacroEcon beginner course, so like, 201, or 102 depending on how your school does things, but yeah...)