There’s a whole study in a medical journal trying to figure out what disease Tiny Tim had in A Christmas Carol that

1. crippled him, but only in one leg;
2. would kill him over the course of a single year;
3. could be healed with 19th century medicine if a sufferer had access to enough money.

The smart money is apparently on either rickets or distal renal tubular acidosis, the treatment for both basically being oranges and beach vacations (two things a rich guy could provide).

I appreciate the resources, thanks. I’ll look into those.

Also, I’m afraid that I may have implied something about rural folks that I didn’t intend. I don’t think that they’re stupid, by any means; or cruel, or inherently evil. I think that they’re victims of misinformation and indoctrination, that they’re lied to and manipulated every four years to vote against their self-interest, and that at this point they have a generational stake in opposing the word “socialism.” And while I’m certainly no elite who sees beyond the system, having been on both sides of this, I think I have a perspective on both the way that capitalist propaganda warps facts and also the way that rural people (at least certain rural people) interact with that propaganda.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that socialists hide the end goal; I’m just saying that using the words that conservatives have spent billions of dollars co-opting and redefining for 70+ years is likely fighting an uphill battle. And perhaps not one that can be won. The meaning of the word “socialism” doesn’t particularly matter to the indoctrinated, as the GOP agitprop have discovered; calling anything “socialism” immediately brands it as evil, even if the thing they’re calling “socialism” is companies rainbow-washing their merchandise during the month of June.

As you noted, people license themselves to believe what they think materially benefits them, but the fall of capitalism is showing that the indoctrinated working class has already been conditioned to blame its collapse on socialism, even as socialists are the very people trying to excavate them from the rubble.

So, no, don’t lie or hide intention. Just be clear about the specifics, and avoid charged language.

Then what’s the solution? They’re suspicious of education. They have poor media literacy (and often poor literacy in general). They live in a filter bubble of like-minded individuals, and they’ve been told that everyone outside that bubble wants to kill them or take away their way of life. They’ve essentially been indoctrinated into a cult, and if you start out trying to deprogram a cult member by saying “so actually the devil isn’t so bad,” you’re probably not going to get very far.

I was hoping that my ad absurdum example was clear. I just meant “a very large number.”

Either way, I certainly hope nobody is seriously advocating for that. It would be quite bleak if that were the only way change could ever occur.

No. I’m advocating for us to try for the best possible version of our future. It may be inevitable, but I’m not interested in hoping for a world where we consider the loss of a hundred million people under the final spasming throes of a dying capitalist oligarchy to be an acceptable loss. Yes, it would be ultimately the oligarchs’ fault, but I still couldn’t live with myself if I were the one advocating for it.

I grew up deep in one of the reddest rural area possible. They’re unbelievably conservative, against their own best interests; and due to the electoral college’s profound gerrymandering of the country, they have an outsized influence on the path forward. Even if Fox News and Newsmax and OAN went away tomorrow, I’d still be worried that radical steps with a smell anything like “socialism” (as defined by the GOP) would be thought-terminated by the extensive propaganda written deep in their brains.

What inaction? I’m acting locally, I’m volunteering, I’m raising my kids to be skeptical of anyone who suggests that empathy is weakness. You’re saying this like there’s an actual option that I’m choosing not to take. I’m saying, if I were somehow able to choose the way the change occurs, it wouldn’t be in a spray of bullets. But it’s not like that option is actually available to me.

No, the Nordic countries did not vote away capitalism.

My original post was about taking steps toward a better life for everyone and a repudiation of late stage capitalism, not specifically going straight to socialism. I think we on the left tend to let the perfect be the enemy of the good (though, in fairness, there’s not a lot of good to ally ourselves with).

They also are largely petro-states and depend on nationalized oil industries to fund some of these safety nets, which are expected to continue withering with the adoption of cheaper renewables like solar over time.

Yeah, but economies always change over time. There aren’t any states whose trade balance and makeup is exactly the same as it’s always been. The current industry just needs to last them long enough to get to the next one; which isn’t a guarantee by any means, but countries have been doing it successfully for centuries.

The working class is more radical than you are, increasingly so every day, so you will struggle to find mass support anyways.

I live in a blue dot city in a red state. The working class here is less radical than George W. Bush. I’m willing to admit that that colors my expectations significantly.

And now we’re into the billion different schools of ethics thing again. No, I didn’t want to be responsible for the innocent people who would die as a result of this hypothetical situation where I have the ability to kick off a bloody revolution. So if there’s a way to stop fascism and techno-slavery without risking the lives of the people I would be trying to save, I would prefer to go with that option.

You cannot sinply put this to a vote and enact it, certainly not within capitalism.

Why not? The Nordic countries did. Yes, the system is designed to perpetuate its existence, and so nothing will happen on its own; but the GOP and the DNC wouldn’t be so dead-set against Zohran Mamdani if his victory wouldn’t present a serious blow to their soft power.

You’re adopting more of a tailist position by avoiding socialism outright.

If it avoids a bloody revolution I don’t care what they call me.

I can be a lot more objective about stuff when it’s not actually me who’s potentially responsible.

He did indeed. But I don’t have it in me to be the direct cause of death for innocent people. Honestly, I very much doubt I have it in me to be the direct cause of death for guilty people.

I know the consequentialist arguments, but I can’t do it.

Yeah, but there are entire schools of ethics built around who gets the blame for indirect systemic causes. If you’re the one who lights the fuse, though, the ambiguity is significantly reduced.

Yeah, I’m not super thrilled with the historic way that social change happens, though. Historically, a lot of innocent people end up dying to get us there. It’d be nice if we could avoid that.

I know that, and you know that, but people are a whole lot more likely to vote for it with that framing than if the “s-word” gets anywhere near it.

It would be a whole lot easier to convince on-the-ground reasonable people to be ok with “all companies are employee-owned” than to convince them that “socialism” doesn’t mean everything the GOP has told them it means for the past fifty years.

Honestly, I’d be tempted to grant the premise. Let’s work together to end corporations. See what happens. When every commercial entity is an employee-owned small business worth less than $5M, communism vs. socialism vs. capitalism becomes a very interesting discussion.

Random fun fact: back in college, my girlfriend’s best friend (and my best friend’s girlfriend) was named Elisa. This being the early 2000s, I used an old school flip phone that had T9 for text entry. But “Elisa” wasn’t in the T9 dictionary, so I would hit 3-5-4-7 and it would prompt “Elis”—presumably expecting an “e” after—but once I hit that last 2, it would change to “flirc.”

It’s interesting that that’s actually become a thing now.

Not entirely sure why that doesn’t feel like a robot to me. Hm.

Maybe it’s because washing machines existed before electricity. I don’t think there are any gas-powered dishwashers.

They chose literally the only widely-adopted home robot. 😆