Disclaimer: bipolar rant.

tl;dr: I'm frustrated that no one is working on clever schemes like this where I could help. All the weaponized math is for capitalist crypto-bros, drug dealers and think tanks, what an unfair world...

Honestly, seeing the real economic and social implications of fields like game theory, cryptography etc. makes one wonder if it could be possible to put these to revolutionary use. I know about the Revolutionary Technical Committee and might get in contact with them, but I'm not sure if they'll know of some concrete project that would help, something like a bunch of decentralized software, smart contracts, mathematical proofs... I can write all of these, but what for?

For example, this comment of mine proposes an economic scheme that would require all of the above to coordinate, secure and trust, to optimize functioning and minimize necessary involvement. But I'm sure there are other (better?) ways to use math and tech directly for revolution. Any revolutionary ideas where the questions arise of "why should I trust...?", "how can we ensure...?", "how to optimize...?" can theoretically benefit from them.

Even my local revolutionary organization mentioned a problem that could be solved using a certain crypto scheme, namely securely and anonymously swapping vehicles between owners, to be presented to the general population but actually meant to avoid identification while reducing transportation costs.

My region is home to the world's largest worker cooperative, Mondragon Corporation. Do you think worker cooperatives are useful to us? Why aren't they more widespread? Could their growth be facilitated by new technologies like the Internet or Blockchain?

Direct download link. Also, have a look at takeshixx/redstar-tools.

So, I've been thinking for a long time what automation means for society in general, and the economy in particular, especially since the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence. All in all, I'm pretty sure this ongoing transition could be understood as a series of phases, at each of which the economy can either move more towards socialism or capitalism. Please tell me what you think about this :)

1. First phase: production increases quickly; this sharp increase in the amount of product manufactured drives automation forward, and results in a higher wage to price ratio and/or a higher profit margin. This phase started at the First Industrial Revolution.
2. Second phase: production grows more slowly, but innovation begins a feedback process that quickly brings products that are technologically more advanced and require higher automation to be produced. This can be coupled to higher prices or not. We are in this phase.
3. Third phase: automation starts advancing at a pace that technological requirements for manufacture can't keep up with. The demand for labor thus decreases significantly, either improving the overall working conditions or increasing unemployment. We're at the verge of entering this phase.
4. Fourth phase: if the previous phases take place in a socialist context, communism is achieved now. If they take place in a capitalist context, living conditions may deteriorate to a point wherein a socialist revolution can be carried out. Or, countries could manage to temporarily contain this deterioration via social measures. If all fails, however, the cost of manufacture will simply keep going down until the economic system partially collapses due to most products essentially becoming free (think of what open source software brought about). This will also realize "communism", but possibly a different form of it that we maybe don't want.

So, since Socialism is the dictatorship of the proletariat, I assume a traditional representative democratic system is not viable, as it overrepresents other classes and their desires. So what other forms of governance have been used?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/411395

Every production system has a way to assign jobs to citizens. The basic idea is that the kinds of labor "required" by society for an efficient fulfillment of needs don't necessarily align with those that an unhindered free choice of jobs would afford.

The way this is solved under capitalism is letting labor be a commodity, subject to market forces. Workers earn wages that are determined by the demand for their work and the availability of it. The difference in wages across jobs pushes us towards working jobs we otherwise wouldn't.

I believe the importance of the job market is underestimated in past Marxist literature. It used to be the case that labor was expendable and interchangeable; the availability of any one kind of labor greatly surpassed demand, making wages just a way to keep the proletariat living and reproducing.

However, with an increase in automation, those jobs have long ago disappeared in developed countries, and new ones are taking their place. Notably, these new jobs increasingly require training, which has the effect of making a worker unsuitable for all but their own specialized job.

As a result, wages are now established mainly by market forces. If an employer can, by virtue of the rest of the economy, offer worse working conditions than minimally required by the workforce, they will. Conversely, if a particular kind of labor is sold for a higher price, the employer will oblige.

As a special case that I'd like to mention, those that are very heavily demanded (e.g. public figures, elite sportsmen...) can get extremely high market prices for their labor. This is a new mechanic that has become more common.

I'd like to discuss how a Socialist country would tackle the problem of job distribution, in a way that hopefully offers better guarantees than a free job market.

A website asking me to "disable ad-blocker" has the balls to tell me I should turn off Firefox Tracking Protection. That's like saying "yeah, we absolutely want to track you across websites, would you do us a favor and let us do it? Please :)"