One way is a combination of market mechanisms and central / decentralized planning. Data workers, for instance would form work groups to conduct the necessary market research.
— Bitter Crank

Isn't that what marketing departments do? Isn't that what people do when they buy Facebook, Google, and other data? — schopenhauer1

Data is data. It might be as useful in a socialist economy as in a capitalist one to know how the consumption of dark green leafy vegetables is correlated with miles ridden on a bike per day or hours spent in bars. Using that data, A central planner could, for instance, improve the nutritional status of beer drinkers by ordering a stalk of kale stuffed into an individual's mugs of beer. If you don't eat it, you don't get ore beer.

Socialist joke:

Leader: After the revolution, there will be strawberries for all.
Peasant: But Leader, I don't like strawberries!
Leader: After the revolution, you will like strawberries ...[or else]

Does everything have to be planned? No.

Cultural workers do not need permission to form a theatrical troupe, an orchestra, a band, a poetry reading, an art show, a baseball game, or a rodeo. Neither should permission be needed to put on plays, concerts, games, or publishing. Yes, the facilities have to be arranged; maybe built. Large outlays require more community involvement. Building a rodeo in a PETA-strong community would probably be a provocation. Having an outdoor heavy metal concert facility next to a funeral home might not be appropriate (just going by current standards. In the future??? Maybe that will be the rage (shudder).

Inventors do not need permission to invent a really good method of cold fusion. Hey, if you can figure out how to make it work, great. You just invented a new way to fry an egg? Good for you, but just because you invented it, doesn't mean that it has to be produced. We already have 15 ways to fry eggs and we can not afford the production and environmental costs of yet another one.

A socialist economy, just like any other, will not be simply wished into existence. It will have to be built up over time. A socialist economy, like any other, will need to be managed. In a socialist economy, selecting managers, coordinators, inspectors, and so on would have the approximate gravity of electing a government. It seems like a system of merit would be better than a system of popular election.

Socialists don't spend enough time thinking about questions like "how would technology and products and services be distributed". A common cop-out is to say that the workers in the future society will have to decide that. And so they shall, but believable socialism depends on believable plans now.

One way is a combination of market mechanisms and central / decentralized planning. Data workers, for instance would form work groups to conduct the necessary market research.

Basic needs in the various parts of a country can be derived from demographic information; information about:

A rising or falling birthrate
A rising or falling death rate
# of people within each decade of life
% of high school completion by county
% of trade school and college completion by state
# of people in the various skills pools (hospitals, railroads, warehousing, schools, farms, and so on
rate of chronic and acute diseases per county

Information about available physical resources is required: How much electricity, fresh water, natural gas, petroleum, metal ores, lumber, cement, sand, gravel, fiber, rubber, etc. is on hand or can be obtained.

A live inventory of production facilities is critical. For instance, how many canning factories are available; how many foundries; how carpet mills; how many chemical plants; how many steel mills; how many bus and railroad factories, how many clothing factories, how many pharmaceutical plants, how many food plants, etc. are available by county

Consumer research polling can determine what the interests and expectations of the population are in various regions for food, clothing, housing, education, employment, entertainment, medical care, and other preferences.

Once regional assessments of consumer needs and desires have been completed, this information can be distributed to work groups to bid on producing the needed or desired goods and services. Elected boards, assisted by work groups, would award contracts to work groups to produce goods and arrange for efficient distribution.

Needless to say, budgeting mechanisms would be required, along with the means to collect funds to finance work. Oversight needs exist to leadoff production and distribution bottlenecks, organizational failure, and so forth. An elected body of expert workers would be needed to conduct that essential oversight.

Oversight, coordination, planning, and intervention are governing activities, and before the whole process can begin, the citizens of the nation will need to authorize these governmental functions,

Socialism isn't supposed to be an austerity regime caused by ineptitude. It is supposed to deliver to its citizens the benefits produced by their labor. A successful socialist economy will succeed in delivering a fair distribution of goods to everyone. Does that mean that everyone can expect a luxury car, a big house, and expensive gadgetry? No. Needs and wants have to be satisfied within a long-range view of sustainability and fairness (something that ardent capitalists would rather not do).

What people should expect is that their needs for decent food, clothing, and shelter will be met; that they have the tools they need to achieve their aspirations (meaning education in its various forms). New technology must not be the possessions of the privileged; it must be made available on a shared basis fpr everyone. (Needless to say, socialists take a dim view of the existence of any privileged class.).

In a nutshell, start with good information and stay with good information to the end.

"Wage slavery" will seem like rhetorical overkill to lots of people, but it is a 'term of art' that socialists use to describe the terms of labor in the capitalist system. If you are of a mind to think that the relationship between you and the state is like chattel slavery, then you will not find the term useful. I suppose you are at the opposite end of the political spectrum from socialists, based on your view of taxation.

For the 10% of Americans who make up the prosperous "middle class" (a demographic located between the working class and the 1% of extremely wealthy people) your view is much more understandable. (The wealth requirement for entry into the middle class as I use it here is between $2,000,000 and $20,000,000, after which one is counted among the upper class.). There are about 16,000,000 adults who qualify.

People who have experienced a lot of personal success in their working experience (whether or not they broke $2,000,000 in assets) are much less likely to feel exploited. Many more working class people were able to experience a sense of success before 1973 than after. The post WWII economic boom tended to lift a lot of boats, and the working class experienced low inflation and good wage growth.

After 1973 (and continuing now) working people experienced a combination of inflation and stagnant wage growth which over time has reduced real income by up to 30%. Those most affected have experienced declining income, less steady employment, and more precarious economic circumstances.

Their loss has been a gain for the wealthier segments of society, so yes, if you are poorer it is really very easy to feel exploited and to feel like a wage slave.

I don’t think the concept of wage slavery adequately describes the relationship. The employer has never forced me to work against my will; I have never been bound to conditions without my consent; i am payed for my services; If I don’t like the conditions I can leave. There just isn’t enough slavery involved there to call it that. — NOS4A2

The terms, "wage slave" and "wage slavery" apply to system, not to individual workers, employers, or supervisors. Marx and Engels were not citing particular cases in the 1844 Communist Manifesto or later. They cite an American example during the period when literal slavery was an important economic factor and the exploitation of 'free labor' could be crude. "If a plantation owner needs his barn roof fixed, he can either hire an Irishman or direct a slave to do the repair. If the slave falls off the roof and dies, the owner is deprived of significant value. If the Irishman falls off the roof and dies, the owner loses nothing."

The way that "wage slavery" works today in a practically non-unionized work force is that employers, whether capitalists, governments, or non-profits have control of the economy and of the workforce. [workers are not unionized for a reason: employers have been waging a continuous war against unions. Put it this way: unionism didn't die out, it was murdered.]

Why aren't workers glad to spend 8 to 10 hours a day at a job? Because the terms of labor tend to be exploitative. In order to efficiently exploit labor, the workplace has to be controlled for as much efficiency and productivity as possible. In the system of capitalism, workers exist to produce profits and to reproduce themselves so that there will be more workers in the future. Workers enjoyment of life is not high on the capitalist to do list.

I'm retired. I spent the usual 40+ years in the work force. Sometimes jobs were fulfilling and enjoyable --maybe 10 years in all. Usually jobs were tolerable, but not great. Sometimes they were awful. It doesn't matter much whether one is a professional or not. What always was the case was that I as a worker had to have a job to live.

I'm in favor of bettering the breed, but that gets us into the difficult questions of how determinism determines outcomes. What, exactly, do we select in prospective breeding pairs (besides overall hotness). Brains? Risk aversion? Emotional stability? Enough obsessive compulsivity to assure rule-compliance? Minimal ambitiousness? Etc.

Once you have the list of traits to select for, remember that 20 generations takes around 600 years. That is a VERY long time for people to pay attention to anything, and it will probably take more like 100 generations to start weeding out annoying human traits.

I take it you want to be on the candidate selection committee--yes?

You need to get an essential relationship straight: It isn't the case that employers create jobs for workers. The fact is that workers create all wealth. If it wasn't for workers (the vast majority of the world's population) you could not turn so much as a dim bulb idea into reality.

Yes, we need bright ideas. Thank you for your service, but you owe your wealth to us.

Finally, I'd like to bring comrade Bitter Crank into the conversation as he is a battle-worn cold war warrior that would probably add some interesting ideas to the mix. — schopenhauer1

ln conclusion, let me add one thing:

No war but the class war.

Have I discharged my obligations to this thread now? I'm tired and want to go to bed.

there can be nothing wrong with the arrangement so long as it is one of voluntary contract and both parties hold up their end of the bargain. — NOS4A2

First, working is not optional. No work, no money; no money, starvation. It's called wage slavery, So a work contract can be terrible but still have takers. BTW, most workers are not even covered by a contract; they are "employed at will" meaning they can be dumped at a moment's notice.

Second, the expectations of the two parties are totally dissimilar. The employer intends to exploit the workers to the maximum, the employees hope to preserve as much of their life force as they can.

Third, very little to no negotiation about the terms of labor are possible when a) there is a line of unemployed people waiting for a job; b) there is no union to give workers some leverage; c) Applying workers are not privy to information which would help them bargain--like, they don't discover what a shit hole a place is until after they are hired.

You, NOS4A2, are free insofar as you obey. Call the number on this card and you will receive instructions.

Corporate chiefs have generally been rewarded well, but the incomes many have been receiving in the past 20 years are unprecedented and larcenous. In the largest companies, the CEO pay ration is as high as 278 times what a typical worker in the same company is making. In 1965 the typical CEOs wage was 20 times the typical worker wage. (Economic Policy Institute)

schopenhauer1, The CEO of a small tech company gets paid $2 million. The head developer gets paid $300,000. A mid-level developer and R&D personnel $150,000. The tech support gets paid $60-75,000. The sales people range from $70-$200,000. The people in the manufacturing get a range from $45-$85,000 depending on their position. Customer service and related personnel get $50,000. — schopenhauer1

CEO Schopenhauer is making 6.5 times what the head developer gets; 13 times what the mid-level developer and R&D personnel get; about 30 times what the average tech support gets; the CEO gets 40 times what the customer service people receive, and 23 to 45 times what the production people are making. The boss makes 40 times what customer service makes.

Both workers and stockholders are concerned about absurdly high executive salaries, because they reduce dividends and the wages of ordinary workers alike. Besides, over-paid CEOs do not necessarily perform all that well. Now, we don't know from wage figures alone how well this small tech company is doing. It may be that Schopenhauer is an industrial wizard and is making money hand over fist. It could also be that the company is burning through cash reserves like it was jet fuel. In general, though, everyone (except overpaid CEOs) likes to see reasonable wage levels, top to bottom. That seems to be the case here, though a reduction of... say $500,000 a year would not put our beloved CEO in line for food stamps. (You WILL reduce the caviar and champaign cocktail parties from weekly to bimonthly, however. We all have to make sacrifices).

There is a cognitive disjuncture or dissonance between acceptance that our behavior is entirely determined by forces and conditions over which we have no control, and the idea of moral responsibility. — Janus

There sure as hell is. I felt heavy static in my brain while posting above.

Is "having agency" determined or is it an individual virtue?

There are several things I wanted to accomplish but I found that I did not have agency to carry them out. Put in the vernacular, "I just couldn't get my head around the problem."

In other instances I found I had agency to spare to complete tasks. Whether or not I was going to have agency or not was determined.

Good topic, and I don't want to derail it. Sorry for whatever extent deraileurment has occurred. However, the reason for our resort to FW drives our search for accountability.

In a better world, we would strive to intervene in the lives of those for whom numerous factors (beyond their control) have made life difficult (for themselves or others). Benign intervention requires acceptance of determinism--otherwise it is likely to be more punitive than corrective.

The concept of FW is the result of determinism being too complex for us to countenance. We big-brained apes can grasp and understand only so much--and a full understanding of determinism is more than we can manage.

Therefore, we do hold ourselves and others accountable. There is no conceivable way to track all the factors that led Joan to murder Sam, so we are forced to settle for personal guilt and prison. The opposite is true too. "I am a successful businessman because I am very smart, and I chose to do everything just exactly right." The fact that your grandparents started the business and trained your parents and later you in its intricacies might have had some deterministic influence, no? Or, the fact that an earthquake and category 5 hurricane created a tremendous need for new and repaired housing was a windfall your business when it would other wise have been a period of no growth?

My guess is that a significant share of drug addicts and alcoholics are gifted with a genetic heritage which facilitates addiction. Compulsive gamblers, compulsively promiscuous dicks, compulsive eaters, and so forth probably have genetic or circumstantial predispositions. Self-intervention in unhealthy behaviors will not occur to many of the addicts, alcoholics, gamblers, dicks, over-eaters, etc.

It isn't sterling virtue that keeps most of us out of the gutter. It's the innate (not virtuous) ability to engage in self-monitoring and self-intervention which prevents disaster. Successful people are born being better at operating in this world. We tend to attribute our successes to our own virtues, and others' failures to their personal degeneracy and degradation.

Aristotle started this discussion; but what the old philosopher meant to say (and would have said had we been there to help him) is that the forces of the deterministic universe are too subtle, too pervasive, and too complex for us to follow. What looks like choosing broccoli over asparagus is the deterministic effect of child rearing practices which caused you to loathe asparagus--it was a spoiled jar of Gerber Asparagus baby food. it made you intensely sick for several days. You didn't know what was happening at the time. Thereafter the idea of eating asparagus never did--and never will--occur to you. Determinism at work.

Conversely, the smell of hot cinnamon rolls was hard-wired into your brain by the many times you enjoyed the delicious spicy bread. The fragrance of cinnamon rolls (or just cinnamon) will always make you feel a twinge of happiness. More determinism.

Do people choose their favorite sexual fetish? No, they do not. It emerges. Do people become Engineers or English teachers on the basis of freely made choices? They do not. Social factors, personal idiosyncrasies, brain build, earlier experiences (of which we were recipients, not designers), and so on. NEXT POST

We are compelled to talk about free will and determinism--we have no choice in the matter. The keystone in our mental structure is either free will or determinism, and the color of the rock that hold the arch up doesn't matter. Free will is determinism. Determinism is free will.

Nonsense?

The thing called "free will" is as deterministic as the cartoon safe plunging to the sidewalk. The source of our free will, whatever it is or is not, are the intricate and immensely complicated transactions of physics and chemistry within our brain cells--which are deterministic.
Accepting the dry determinism of the universe (freely or not) doesn't change anything. We still have to choose all sorts of things during the day: brown socks or black socks; broccoli or asparagus; robbery or burglary; put fake data in the report or let the facts show that one is a lazy bureaucrat; have sex with a stranger or not; read the New York Times or the Boston Globe; stop at Aldi's or Trader Joe's; watch another episode of the Sopranos or not.

We might want to say squirrels are subject to crude determinism. Still, squirrel X has to decide whether squirrel Y has watched X bury a walnut. The transactions in the squirrel's neurons are pretty much the same as ours. Evolution has seen to that. But evolution is merciful and the squirrels can not decide to read boring, difficult existentialist texts. We can, so there are limits to evolution's mercy.

it makes no sense to me as a judge to punish you, because what happened could not be avoided, and locking you up wouldn't would be unnecessary punishment for an unavoidable outcome, — Manuel

If a criminal can not avoid committing criminal acts (say, arson, rape, and/or bloody murder), would that not be an excellent reason to lock him or her up? Call it punishment or prevention--some people should not be at large.

Don't know what the retail price is, but it is hard, these days, to find slop for less than $5.99 a lb.

But you are absolutely right -- they weren't eating factory raised meat 100 years ago and more. Food was pretty much all organic, range or grass fed, and fairly lean up until the 20th century. Range fed beef has a distinct flavor that is noticeably different than feed-lot fed. I'm not sure whether free range chicken tastes better than shed raised birds. One can only free-range a small number of chickens; spreading 30,000 chickens out on the ground is possible, of course, but chickens like to roost indoors at night. I suppose border collies could be raised to manage the flocks and keep foxes and coyotes away. Not much one can do about hawks and eagles.

I was trying my hardest, literally couldn't do another kick, and I get told that I should kick until I am so out of breath I can't talk. But that kind of mentality is what gets the job done, I guess, because I ended up finishing the reps and felt like I was going to pass out. — ToothyMaw

How do you define "enlightenment"? How would you know that you were "enlightened"? Would anyone else recognize your "enlightenment"?

This kind of severe routine enables you to find the actual limits of your capacity. Any extreme exercise can do that. It's possible that one will die trying, but most often not.

Question: Is knowing how many kicks, miles, pounds, laps, etc. one can perform. It's certainly useful information. The first 100 mile a day bike ride I did was tiring (I had worked up to it) but it wasn't enlightening. It was just nice to know I could do it. Would I have been enlightened if I had gone 200 miles in 1 day?

There are probably numerous routes to enlightenment (whatever that is) and none of them are probably reliable. Many people have experienced severe pain and were not enlightened by it; they were just exhausted.

It's probably useful to discover one's actual performance limits, provided one is healthy enough to test the limit. Most of the time we aren't asked to do anything like that in a situation where much is at stake. SEALS perform in situations where maximum effort might be required, and where extreme suctiveness (bad smells, heat, cold, deep water, hot sand, death on a stick, etc.) should not impair performance.

Something similar likely exists in trauma surgery: the subject comes in as a stinking mess of blood, guts, feces, etc. and one has to focus on several diverse problems at the same moment. Anyone might be held up at knife or gun point, and keeping your cool in that really bad situation helps one avoid needing the services of a trauma surgeon (or a coroner).

It isn't like vegans don't expect to get the short end of the food stick. — Ennui Elucidator

OK, then. Just take that delicious vegan risotto back to the kitchen. We'll have it tomorrow.

expanding our scope of moral regard is generally thought to be a sign of progress — Ennui Elucidator

Sure. But as you know, morality and ethics are not simple issues. Does having the same moral regard for an elegant horse and a shrimp make sense? Does an ox pulling a plow deserve the same regard that the man pushing and guiding the plow deserves? I don't think so.

The connection between the cow and the Big Mac has been made very tenuous through the mechanisms of commerce. Is it moral to demand that a person eating at McDonalds feel guilt for exploiting an animal so far removed from his or her existence? No.

I believe that eating meat is in and of itself a moral act. Can bad practices on farms and in slaughter-houses rise to the level of immorality? They can. They have. I have chopped off the heads of chickens and I did not feel guilty. It was a quick death--"a quick chippy choppy on a big black block". These chickens were genuine free-range birds.

I recognize a continuum between the man and worms. We share in "life" but we are not equal. As an animal's complexity of existence rises, we grow closer. A chicken and a parrot probably don't have to much in common either. So a chicken and a man have much, much less in common than a dog and a man have in common. Pigs and man have all too much in common.

A good principle is to return meat to the status it occupied for many centuries in western culture: Meat was 'feast food'. One ate it on celebratory occasions. Feasting wasn't frequent because it was expensive. On ordinary days one ate bread, vegetables, maybe fish, maybe clams. At $25 a pound this year, oysters are clearly a feast food. Ground up cow at McDonalds may be cheap but it is still a feast food.

Granted, learning to replace daily meat servings with vegetables, beans, and grains takes learning, technique, and practice.

Another approach to reduced meat consumption is to use meat as an ingredient rather than the main course. That's what pizza or spaghetti does.

Don't exploit animals — Ennui Elucidator

That's why I am not a vegan. The exploitation of animals is an essential human trait that extends back into era of Homo erectus and earlier. We evolved as an exploiter of the available resources. Some animals were bred into beasts of burden and traction. Others for fiber, meat, milk, and eggs. Without resource exploitation, we ourselves would have died out long ago. We learned how to exploit plants (and minerals).

Does the horse and the ox dislike pulling plows, wagons, and chariots? Probably no more than people dislike a lot of the jobs they have to do. Does a sheep mourn the loss of its wool? Probably not. It might feel good, like getting an overdue haircut.

We may well be exceeding the tolerable level of exploitation of our planet. We should have been more careful, and we had best get more careful pretty damn quickly if we want a future. We should eat less meat and milk because of its burden on resources, even as we continue to exploit cattle. Wool? Perhaps more sustainable than polyester. They fertilize the soil on which their grass grows. Same for cattle, if grass fed.

I like meat. Converting a pig into a pork chop does not have to be a horrifying process. Profits and cheap meat pretty much require it. Same for any other animal product.

I am not sure whether people "hate vegans" as much as find them annoying. I think it rude to show up at carnivore social event and demand animal-free food. It would be equally rude for a carnivore to show up at a vegan social event and demand meat.

Vegans count as "picky eaters" because they exclude everyday foods that cost people eat. I understand how people with celeriac disease really have to exclude gluten from their diet, but then there are people who don't have any degree of celeriac disease but think gluten free is cool, and expect others to accommodate them. Same for people who insist on organic foods.

When I prepare a meal for a local homeless shelter, I am happy to make vegan food that is attractive, flavorful, and nutritious. I exclude pork (usually) because there are sometimes homeless Moslems there. If someone just happens to not like pork, well... tough. Just eat what's on your plate. [I'll eat cilantro / coriander without making an issue of it, even though I think it is disgusting.]

Typical BC crankiness. — Ennui Elucidator

It's my specialty.

Veganism has NOTHING to do with flavor profiles or ingredient choice outside of not deliberately contributing to animal suffering by the methods/products used in making the food item. — Ennui Elucidator

Yes, true. However...

Deviant food choices have been a vehicle for personal expression, personal exceptionalism, and personal validation for centuries, but I've only been annoyed by it since the 1970s. 50 years ago there were 'whole foods' (not the Amazon-owned stores). Think dense, heavy bread); think the early food coops, which being amateur operations at the time, had the sorriest looking produce in town. And bins of beans, unmilled wheat, none of it very sanitary. I shopped at them when I was out slumming and as a way of virtue signaling (which wasn't a thing yet).

There are a lot of food fetishes around. Vegetarianism/veganism has a sound pedigree, even if it is fetishistic.

Cruelty to animals. Yes: industrial agriculture results in domestic food animal cruelty. I get that. Our global, industrial, technological, mass culture also results in extensive animal cruelty, visited upon food animals and the much larger population of wild creatures, great and small. Plants too. I don't like it, but there is no real "opt out" other than one's personal demise,

A lot of the food fetishes are inadvertently on the right track: eat less meat and less fat; eat more unprocessed or minimally processed fruits, vegetables, and grains--for whatever reason. Got it.

The problem is this: One doesn't achieve virtue by following a particular menu. An affluent vegan's footprint will be larger than a poor carnivore's. Pillsbury's frosting may be vegan but it is still industrial in every sense of the word.

I don't have a solution to the problem of global, industrial, technological, mass culture. Nobody else does either, as far as I know.

The JW will not orbit the earth; it will orbit the sun in the comfort and luxury provided by La Grange Point 2. Read all about it here. For an animation of the La Grange points, here.

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, baptized Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia, was either an Italian or a French mathematician, depending on the source. "In 1772, Lagrange published an "Essay on the three-body problem". In the first chapter he considered the general three-body problem. From that, in the second chapter, he demonstrated two special constant-pattern solutions, the collinear and the equilateral, for any three masses, with circular orbits." -- WIKIPEDIA.

La Grange rated a statue, which none of us have, so far.

Yes.

Webb can't look at the big bang — AgentTangarine

There wasn't much to 'see' in the Big Bang, because for the first 240,000 - 300,000 years, there was no light. Don't know about other radiation in the spectrum. Anyone?

Does God care whether the JW works or not?

The essay does not deserve credit for not having syntactic mistakes; logical fallacies; plagiarism. I would expect any fairly good essay to be clear and well-written and on topic. So far, a B. Philosophically interesting and insightful content is what would raise it up to an A (provided the insight and interest characterized the whole paper, and not just 1 small point).

I was referring to spatial dimensions. Well, actually you're right. It's only 45 billion ly... — AgentTangarine

I apparently do not know what I am talking about. "They" say the universe is 13 billion years old, give or take 15 minutes. check. "They" also say the universe is 93.016 billion light years across, one edge to the other. I misunderstood the 'light year' concept. A light year is equivalent to 5.88 trillion miles (9.46 trillion kilometers). a light year is a measure of distance, not time, which is where I got confused. So, for sure the universe is many gazillion miles across--or thick, long, diagonal--however you slice it.

I shall now blush and bow out of this discussion.

The should point it at the dark side of the Moon. — AgentTangarine

Allow me to alert you to the fact that there is no dark side of the moon. The side we do not see faces the sun as much as the side we do see. Also, the 'far side' of the moon has been surveyed to some extent, and there are interesting differences, The far side has denser rock than the near side.

Also, the Big Bang was around 13 billion light years in the past, not 90 billion.

the image I see when holding a mirror — AgentTangarine

Just shove your head up your ass and get an even better view.

All my fingers and all of my toes are crossed (cramping has already set in) on behalf of the James Webb. What could go wrong? Alas, it is one more unwelcome cause of anxious anticipation, like the upcoming midterms, 2024 presidential election, future of the plague, the economy, present and future wars, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts, burrowing worms, chewing grubs, and flying weevils, etc.

Last week, there were 15 tornadoes in Minnesota -- until then, Minnesota had never had so much as a chance of a tornado in December. Very little damage, but still... Omnia mutantur.

The happiest of holidays to you.

EDIT: on the other hand, NASA was able to send a rocket to Mars, pause the lander in its descent long enough to lower! the large vehicle to the surface--and then disconnect the cable and not have the lander crash on top of it's cargo. Inordinately complicated and it worked.

I quite simply think that the subject of equality has become such a taboo topic nowadays, that it distorts the public and scientific discourse on the subject. — Qmeri

The matter of equality / inequality seems more like an obsession among millions of people, rather than a taboo. What is taboo is the claim that genetics is a cause of inequality--that this or that group is superior or inferior because of their genetic inheritance. There is too much water under the bridge for that to be otherwise.

Individuals are like pebbles on a beach: you can average out the features of a million pebbles and you may find that none of them are precisely average. I think that the pebbles are all more alike than they are different; others think they are all more different than alike. The circumstances of individuals vary greatly. Individuals are immersed in circumstances of culture, physical environment, genetic endowment, physical health, mental health, education, good to bad parenting, and so on and so forth. Individual results will vary greatly depending on circumstance.

Social Justice Warriors (SJW) focus on inequalities of circumstance. My impression is that most SJWs have no idea of just how difficult it will be to achieve equality of circumstance. (We can not wind time back to the last ice age and start over.). Their opposites, Social Injustice Ogres (SIO), are aware of the difficulties, and have no intention of doing anything about it.

Actually most people are not willing to go to far outside their own interests to change the world on behalf of the disadvantaged. It isn't that most people are secretly SIOs. It's just that billions of people are too close to the edge themselves.

As Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you." There will always be inequality (not because Jesus said so, but because that is just the way the world works). The pebbles on the beach are never all going to weigh 2.333 oz, never have the same mineral content, never have the same shape, color, gloss, or position in the pile.

If "the only war is the class war" then we already have a civil war in progress, It is of long duration but quiet. The very wealthy and the very powerful (all in the same club) have accumulated their power through stealth, legislation, practice, and acquiescence. The working class is their victim here, even if working class citizens are foolish enough to serve as foot soldiers in an up-rising, insurrection, coup, or civil war.

There is a good sized pool of fools in America: the anti-science; anti-vax, anti-media, anti-government, anti-intellectual, patriotic, free-enterprise, bible-wielding, conspiracy theory consumers, etc. Many of these people have already talked themselves into a corner where an admission that their world-view is a deeply flawed is not going to be at all easy.

Someone will come along who can generate a standing wave of hysteria, and it will e hell on wheels for a while.

I think of vegans as people who really don't like food very much. They gain significant nourishment from their membership in a club of people who prefer to eat dreary feed. Then there is self-righteousness--the vegan frosting on the cake (which is gluten free, fat free, egg free, and sugar-free).

People have the right to privately make decisions about their own bodies. One of the evils of "pro-life" militants is to load both abortion and miscarriage with guilt (the gift that keeps on giving) and the expectation of grief. Abortion is murder, they say. Miscarriage -- which is entirely involuntary -- is equivalent to losing an infant.

Having an abortion is a serious enough decision for the woman's well-being, no doubt. But what is aborted is not yet a person -- in most cases, abortions occur in the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy. Pro-life sentiment calls for burial of a miscarriage. It is just manipulative sentimentality.

The doctrine that 'personhood' begins at conception is noxious. It makes the woman the slave of the fertilized egg, for which she is supposed to feel fulfilled, no matter the real-world circumstances of conception or consequences for her life. "Pro-life" is "anti-choice" in more ways than one. It's a life-sentence, so to speak.

It isn't just about women, either. Partnered men and women want to have successful families. Too many children is a problem the world-over, in terms of successful families where children reach adulthood and the parents are not destroyed in the process. Unlimited fecundity is a burden that poor people can not support. So, yes -- birth control, abortion, sterilization -- all are helpful remedies, and they all stand against conservative religious doctrine.

Damnation on conservative religious doctrine!!!

you taste like chicken — James Riley

Some cannibals call us "long pig" so we must taste more like pork. We're probably tasty, provided we're well fed and properly cooked.

Gloria Steinem said "If men could get pregnant, abortion on demand would be a sacrament."

One thing a tape worm can do for you that a fetus can't is suppress allergy symptoms by reducing the sensitivity of the immune system. Personally, I prefer Benadryl to parasites.

Just caught that edit of yours. "Totally" might be too much. Cheap enough carbon recapture — javra

True, 'totally screwed' might be overly pessimistic. How about 'largely screwed'?

One form of carbon recapture that is on the shelf, proven, and ready to go: trees. if we all planted as many trees as we could (within the restraints of land needed for agriculture), we could soak up a lot of carbon. another approach: Agricultural methods are available which increase the carbon content of soils. A third important approach is conservation. IF (very big IF) we reduced private transportation (1 car, 1 passenger) and reduced production of many goods (fewer clothes, fewer sofas, far fewer disposable products) we could reduce CO2 output.

A side effect of obsessive tree planting is that in 60 years (about) could begin harvesting huge new reserves of carbon sequestered building material. A wooden house or wooden office building holds on to its stored carbon until it is burned up. With maintenance, a wood building can last hundreds of years. Keep it dry and don't let it catch fire.

Pumping CO2 into the ground requires a lot of energy.

Or "Hegemony would occur when a law adopts prevailing majority social values instead of a minority dissenting views"?

According to this poll, the abortion debate is driven by the absolutists minority on both sides.

Three-quarters of Americans say they want to keep in place the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal in the United States, but a strong majority would like to see restrictions on abortion rights, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.

What the survey found is a great deal of complexity — and sometimes contradiction among Americans — that goes well beyond the talking points of the loudest voices in the debate.

This poll shows that hegemony goes to the pro-abortion position--nationally, maybe not locally.

But, alas, I’ve never been that cool to start new slang. — javra

Cool people don't start slang, they are the first ones to get noticed for using it. I've never been cool.

Maybe 'apoplectic" or some such. Apoplectic apocalypse. Apocalyptic apoplexy. I was going to suggest "calyptic" but it's already in the urban dictionary.

unless the global warming thing actually is someone's hoax — javra

Not a hoax. We're totally screwed.