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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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